Future Islands: People Who Aren't There Anymore (digital outlets)

 |   |  <1 min read

Future Islands: People Who Aren't There Anymore (digital outlets)

On this, their seventh album, Future Islands' frontman/writer Samuel T. Herring – also an actor – delivers every emotion as if it's on the surface of his skin as he immerses himself (and his audience) in the emotional fallout of a recent break-up.

“I am waiting, I’m not breaking I lie, tell myself, 'it’s okay', when it's not quite” on The Tower; “When I’m stuck inside this room without you and you’re still asleep, I'm like a prowling lion (Deep in the Night); “I'm just an animal that strains against my line. I push and pull the cord, to make me feel alive. I had to fight to wrest the reins back on my life” (Give Me the Ghost Back).

And so on.

Herring's relentless self-centredness makes for performative sincerity but is akin to overwrought am-dram theatrics by a hollowed-out Fine Young Cannibals.

The first-person emotions driving these relentlessly earnest and therapeutic lyrics arrive atop widescreen 1980s synth landscapes (Corner of My Eye) or to driving dance beats.

Despite that, over the long haul this is enervating.

.

You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Beat Rhythm Fashion: Tenterhook (Failsafe/digital outlets)

Beat Rhythm Fashion: Tenterhook (Failsafe/digital outlets)

To be honest, I can't say I ever saw Wellington's late Seventies/early Eighties band Beat Rhythm Fashion . . . and until now maybe not even much, if anything, of their music, other than perhaps in... > Read more

The Chicks: Gaslighter (Sony/digital outlets)

The Chicks: Gaslighter (Sony/digital outlets)

The former Dixie Chicks who so offended Bush the Younger, some of his Southern loyalists and faced boycotts and death threats 17 years ago, here return on album after a 14 year absence with an... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

GUEST MUSICIAN, WRITER AND ARTIST KATHRYN VAN BEEK on how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign

GUEST MUSICIAN, WRITER AND ARTIST KATHRYN VAN BEEK on how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign

When I was in bands your options for recording your music were to fund it yourself or to keep rolling the grant application dice. But these days you can get the internet to pay you to be... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE DONAYS: A devil of a story

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE DONAYS: A devil of a story

On the cover of the 1986 Rhino compilation Beatle Originals; Original Versions of the Songs the Beatles Made Famous there are photos of the usual suspects: Little Richard (with Kansas City/Hey Hey... > Read more