Future Islands

It’s easy to get caught up trying to squeeze Future Islands into one genre, but don’t waste your time—attempting to place the Baltimore band in a box is self-defeatingly contrary to the band’s music. Future Islands dip their fingers in post-punk new wave, dance-drone sounds, and basement jams à la Home Recording Network. Future Islands make wonderfully simple dance tunes, then complicate those songs with lyrics about unrequited creeper-crushes, questionable decisions made with strangers in the dark, and the scars left on the hearts of every 20something who survived getting dumped. The recently released On The Water finds frontman Samuel T. Herring spending much of the group’s third album waxing nostalgic over dead-end romances and the swollen heartaches that come with them. It’s a cryptic confessional, Herring’s own song-by-song exorcism of haunted thoughts and occupied memories.

Updated 10/19/2011