Send "Future Islands " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 One virtue of a legitimate post-punk/post-hardcore musical landscape is the ability to move beyond the deadlocking argument surrounding what constitutes the true sound and lifestyle of those genres. In recent months, Malcolm McLaren passed away, Raw Power reared its Bowie-mixed head again (this time in a “Legacy” edition), Damian Abraham and Buzz Osborne made multiple appearances on Red Eye, and a reformed Earth Crisis hired a Fall Out Boy to play drums. In short, anything goes. Future Islands’ self-application of “post-wave” as a genre descriptor could have been a major misstep, as it might have unintentionally suggested that the band was claiming superiority or transcendence over the music that influenced its work. Yet the term fits without question upon seeing the band live or listening to one of its independent releases like 2008’s Wave Like Home. Despite the presence of synthesizers as an integral instrument, the minimization of electric guitars, and the overall dance-music patina, Future Islands is an exemplary post-punk band. The band seems to understand that punk and hardcore derived their identity as much from an underlying spirit as they did from specific traits of composition and production. For Future Islands, post-wave is a direction that combines the sounds of new wave with that raucous rock spirit and channels both into an energetic and soulful form....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Future Islands have described their first full-length for Thrill Jockey, recorded after relocating to Baltimore and falling in with Dan Deacon's Wham City collective, as "post-wave." Taking cues from early Devo and New Order and replacing the dance-pop movement with rich characterization and storytelling, they've found themselves at a pleasant distance from most formal genre comparisons. Their music is playful but steeped in subtle detail, with both emotional heft and a pungent sense of theatricality. Playing together since their college days in North Carolina but not truly finalizing the band until 2006, the trio seems comfortable bouncing ideas off each other while remaining anchored in their individual roles. J. Gerrit Welmers' synth work reinterprets those crystalline new wave textures and enhances them with feedback and buttery depth, sometimes accented with sparse snippets of programmed drums and rusted samples. But Future Islands avoid cluttering their music, allowing bassist William Cashion (a Peter Hook disciple if there ever was one) to direct the ship with his undulating plunks and strums, stringing the rest of these mercurial details along with him....full text |
| Strangeglue |
| Say the word "synthpop" to the average person with a working knowledge of both synthesizers and pop music and they'll likely recoil in horror as they are deluged with harrowing visions of either Hellogoodbye or Metronomy. Thankfully, it's a very broad genre tag and likely prone to misapplications a-go-go. So while Future Islands do fulfil the two basic requirements of the brand, they skew more into the 80's post-punk/new-wave market complete with perpetually-held notes, sweeping swathes of reverberation and vocals not unlike the mumbled drawl of Stellastarr* and their contemporaries. Now signed to forward-thinking label Thrill Jockey (the company let you listen to every track of every album they've released free-of-charge, before you buy), this marks their first full-length for them and it shows no signs of the (now three-member) band pandering to the 'hipster' crowds. Unlike, say, The Raveonettes, who take similar influences and distort them through the prism of modern art, this is pure retro breeziness. The album could be a call-to-arms for the resurgence of the Third Reich (which, oddly enough, it sounds distinctly like on "An Apology"), but it's delivered so lightly, so deftly and so softly that it just swirls into thirty-six minutes of sublime musical fogginess. To some, this could be construed as a bad thing, to others, good. Future Islands are a band with no pretences. They love their twentieth-century influences and adhere to them strictly, not letting the poison of the nineties, or noughties seep into their love-letter to Reagan-era America. If you can accept them for that and enjoy an album with no ambition but that to entertain through Aero-light fluffiness, then you may have found another great way to spend the hours of your life....full text |
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