Parting The Waters

Emerging from the creative melting pot that is the Baltimore music scene, which in recent times has given the world such disparate sounds as Beach House, Double Dagger and Deerhoof, synth romanticists Future Islands have evolved from a frenetic electro menagerie intent on starting parties and freaking out into a tortured pop opera, straddling highly strung affectedness, anguished theatricality and intimacy laid bare. The trio interweave Gerrit Welmer's sonorous synthesisers and William Cashion's guitars with ringleader Sam Herring's iconic vocals, evoking the more flamboyant fringes of pop whilst staying firmly rooted in a punk-like visage.

Whilst 2010's excellent album In Evening Air was steeped in the quagmire of a failed relationship, the rich tapestry of sounds presented transcended the potential pomposity to craft a truly resonant suite of songs. This year's release On The Water steps even further away from their bombastic beginnings, creating a tempered soft-focus atmosphere for Herring to self-flagellate over love lost and in doing so offers a powerful-yet-tortured work of art.

The change in tempo and atmosphere on On The Water wasn't a conscious effort to ensure that Future Islands is ever-evolving; rather it was spawned from the desire for self-preservation after years of incessant touring.

“When we started writing and recording On The Water it was a time we had finished a lot of touring, and we were exhausted,” Welmers admits. “What came out of that was something slower; there was more space to breathe within the songs, less cluttered. We didn't specifically sit down with anything in mind; it was primarily a release from the constant touring. It re-energised us.”

Whilst there was the communal need to recharge the batteries, the writing process for On The Water was much vaguer in concept.

“We just sort of create, we never have any idea where things will go,” Welmer muses. “There are times when I might write a faster, dancier song, or maybe talk about a set tempo, but other than that we just create without any pre-planned focus. I spend a lot of time writing up the keyboard stuff and the programming, getting rough ideas and showing the guys. If they like it we'll play around, try to come up with a bass line and guitar, the standard songwriting process I guess. But we record all of our practices, so we jam things out, often without talking to each other beforehand. We never write on the road, we are very much in the mindset of doing shows, but when we get home we try to decompress, to gather our feelings of what's just happened, then come together and see what's settled.”

Nevertheless the album is Future Islands' first record that hangs together in its entirety, an elegiac musing on life's greatest conundrums – love, both acquired and lost, grief, desolation, and deliverance. Not exactly the most uplifting of thematic concepts, yet the trio have taken morose ponderings to another realm to the point where the juxtaposition of the positive and negative aspects of living co-exists naturally.

“I think that we have worked hard on maturing our sound; our first album (2008's Wave Like Home) we recorded in a few days, whereas we lived with these songs for some time,” Welmers concedes. “We haven't ever really gone into making throwaway songs, but the earlier stuff was written all over the place. On The Water is of a time and place, and I think that helped for them to join together so well. Also these aren't negative songs; they touch on sad or emotional things, but most of them are positive and uplifting. I don't think people get bummed out by us; Sam's lyrics are mature and heartfelt, yet the music is catchy. We want to enjoy life without leaving out the reality of it.”

Although it is somewhat tempered on their latest release, Herring's vocals are at the forefront of the Future Islands aesthetic, his powerful, throaty and at times delirious delivery proving to be a divisive touchstone. He sings like a man possessed, as if the vocals control him. Live it makes perfect sense, yet on record it is something that more difficult to harness.

“It is entirely Sam, there is no denying it, he is a force of nature,” Welmers says. “To us it's perfectly natural, but we realise that he is a one of a kind, and that isn't always going to connect with everyone. When we play live we just do our thing and it's up to Sam to reel the crowd in. And it will either (a) energise them, or (b) terrify them. Sometimes the crowd won't connect, but it's not from a lack of trying. He can definitely get into people's faces, and I think it's necessary to light some fires under people's asses sometimes, you know, 'You're at a show and it's gonna be fun, so enjoy yourself!'”

Future Islands come into their own in the live arena, a tour de force of intensity and emotion led by Herring's hyper-real theatrics that leaves the audience in lathers of sweat. The band has been touring relentlessly for years, and Welmers admits that when the downtime does come, it's hard to get back into the slipstream of everyday life.

“We have been on the road for so long that you get used to it, so coming home is very confusing,” he admits. “You get stuck in this cycle, so you have to strike a balance. You have to find things to do with your day to get back in the swing of things, like buying groceries and paying bills. We started touring pretty heavily four or five years ago, and since the beginning there hasn't been a whole lot of hype around us, it's been up to us to make it what it is, slowly building fans and creating a strong backbone. In the middle of a long tour we can feel tired, but we feed off the crowd's energy. It's been our life for so long now that to stop playing is weird; it's nice but we end up counting down 'til we are back out there again.”

It is just as difficult pinning down what it is that defines Future Islands musically, something that Welmers also struggles to articulate.

“It is difficult, and I think it can only be defined to a certain extent as its own thing,” he reflects. “There is a lot of energy involved, there's a lot of emotion. We aren't looking to be different, or to change the instrumentation, yet I think that, whilst I won't say limitless, our style of making music has a lot of scope. The best description that we've ever had was from Sam's brother, who said we were 'too noisy for new wave, too pussy for punk'. I think that's an apt description.”

Future Islands will be playing the following shows:

Wednesday 19 September - Northcote Social Club, Melbourne VIC
Thursday 20 September - Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW
Friday 21 September - GOMA, Brisbane QLD