tnl music club week #7 (future islands - in evening air)

[APC]

i've been a follower of baltimore's "wham city" art collective for years now. so my first pick will be my favorite 2010 release from an associated act.

future islands - in evening air

In Evening Air is the debut full length from Future Islands on Thrill Jockey. In Evening Air marks the first full-length release from Future Islands since moving to Baltimore, and also their first full-length release as a focused three piece. However, there's no lack of spirit in this paring down. More so, there's a greater intensity and eye to detail than we have yet witnessed from the group. These changes are felt and heard. In Evening Air takes us and swirls us around those feelings of growing outside of one's city and one's self. It moves through gripping loss and the search for peace from a heavy head, with an ease and understanding where there was none.

an apology - live



tin man - video

edit* week 8, not 7. someone change that please.

[Vasteel]

I was at that show in the video. I like this group.

[Scourge]

I wanted to like In Evening Air more than I do. Conceptually it's fine: Joy Division/Early New Order post-punk with a lead singer more akin to Tom Waits... But it gets a little too theatrical I think. The tracks where the vocals are more subdued outclass those like Tin Man; thankfully there are more of the better ones than the other way around.

One real issue I have with the album that I noticed really obviously on my second listen was that the arrangements follow way too similar a recipe on most tracks. More specifically, a four-on-the-floor beat starts the tracks and everything else is an accoutrement to that steady, driving beat on through to the end. Does that make a song bad? Not necessarily. But I think that way more attention should be paid to the drum programming on future albums. Here, the beats reminded me of what I've done in the past as a cheap, fast alternative to having anything good backing me up - but I sucked in this department and new it.

This becomes even more of an issue for me when I compare Future Islands to their contemporaries, most notably The Drums and Wild Nothing, and at a stretch, Twin Shadow. Yeah, all three are aiming for something slightly different than Future Islands, but it's all 80's and retro alternative lo-fi, but in the case of the aforementioned three, they at least TRY when it comes to the programming of the beats.

All that being said, In Evening Air is a good album and I'm glad I own it. But I have high hopes that any full-length follow-ups will flesh out the arrangements better and that the theatricality will be kept in check a bit or somehow be used more effectively.

[Opaque]

I did about three play throughs and I really don't know how I feel about this.

Every time it does something I really like it follows it up with something that sounds too 80s pop for me to get into. In what might seem like a contradiction to what I just said my favorite song is Inch of Dust.

[Cowutopia]

This sounds like TV on the Radio decided to play at being Passion Pit.

It's alright.

Not one of the songs is as fun as anything by Cut Copy or Hercules and Love Affair