If you\u2019re looking for an album to mope to this Valentine\u2019s Day, look no further than the latest from Islands. Upon first listen, it\u2019s sort of unexpected how consumed with loss this disc is, whether it\u2019s the loss of a lover or a bandmate. Considering all of Islands\u2019 previous singles have been gleefully upbeat (sample title: \u201cDon\u2019t Call Me Whitney, Bobby\u201d from their amazing debut album Rough Gem<\/i>), it throws the listener for a loop seeing titles like \u201cLonely Love,\u201d \u201cNo Crying,\u201d and \u201cNever Go Solo.\u201d But according to lead singer and lyricist Nick Thorburn, \u201c\u201cI left New York after the end of a relationship and came to Los Angeles. This record deals with loss, with memory and forgetting and with dreaming. I started writing it on Valentine\u2019s Day and it\u2019s coming out on Valentine\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
So while you\u2019re not going to get any of the atmospheric weirdness of their previous releases, what you do have with A Sleep And A Forgetting <\/i>is a mature, cohesive build on what has already made the Islands sound so intriguing. Recorded in less than two weeks, the songs have an immediacy and a freshness to them that definitely grows on you with multiple listens. Starting things off, \u201cIn A Dream It Seemed Real\u201d is ethereal and strangely haunting, leading right into the slow-burning, soulful \u201cThis Is Not A Song.\u201d The spare nature of the instrumentation is an interesting counterpoint to utterly despairing lyrics like \u201cIf Penny rolls away, I will have lost everything \/ In many subtle ways, I already don\u2019t have anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Thornburn alludes to this album being the product of a breakup, it\u2019s hard not to read a little bit of inter-band drama in some of these songs, considering drummer Jamie Thompson left the band for the second time prior to their 2010 tour. Most evident of this is \u201cNever Go Solo,\u201d one of the most energetic yet pointed moments of the album with its dark swirls of piano and erratic tonal shifts. Songs like this are why A Sleep And A Forgetting <\/i>demands multiple listens to really get into it \u2013 on first listen, it seems almost offputtingly bleak, but by the third spin or so, you start to realize how well-crafted, interesting, and relatable this material is. And as always, they\u2019ve got an ear for catchiness: \u201cLonely Love,\u201d despite its depressing title, has a peppy folk-pop feel to it with the strums of acoustic guitar and Thorburn\u2019s crystalline voice.<\/p>\n
And luckily, there\u2019s a good amount of tracks that shift out of the mood of moroseness. \u201cHallways\u201d is jam-packed with handclaps, jaunty piano, and upbeat harmonies, while \u201cCan\u2019t Feel My Face\u201d is easily one of the coolest moments here, sounding like a cross between garage band and \u201850s pop. Meanwhile, though stripped-down and slow, \u201cOh Maria\u201d is one of the album\u2019s standouts, featuring little more than Thorburn\u2019s warm voice and an acoustic guitar until the piano and cymbals start crashing in. This would\u2019ve made an amazing closer to the album, actually. <\/p>\n
Thorburn has never been this revealing and honest in his lyricism, and as excellent as Islands\u2019 early albums were, all full of shimmering pop and textures culled from every genre of music, they nevertheless had this sense of intimacy. It\u2019s an interesting trade-off, but with a band that shapeshifts this much, who knows where they will be on their next disc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":30875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7727],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42552","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-islands","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42552"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}