FUTURE ISLANDS
People Who Aren’t There Anymore 4AD
Spacious-sounding seventh from Baltimore’s heart-on-sleeve synth-pop quartet.
By Sharon O’Connell
7/10
Hurt vying with hope: Samuel T Herring (left) and Future Islands
FRANKHAMILTONARTDIRECTIONNOLENSTRALS
IF Future Islands ever felt moved to remember that “all things come to those who wait”, they must also have wondered the heck when. For this Baltimore quartet (initially atrio), it was in May 2014. Over the preceding eight years, they’d racked up many hundreds of shows and three albums before an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman blasted them into wider public awareness overnight, thanks to singer Samuel THerring’s famously unbounded performance of “Seasons (Waiting On You)”. Ten years and two UK Top 30 albums later that viral meme is history, while Future Islands press forward.
Alongside their serious live draw, the band’s status rests on a hybrid of romantic new wave and upbeat, ’80s-toned synth pop which they’ve dubbed “post wave”. Across six albums to date they’ve made minor tweaks to that sound –ratcheting up the tension on one, letting out some slack in another, introducing the odd guest vocalist –rather than transformed it. If this has left them relying rather too heavily on a formula, then it’s an honest one that clearly connects. On People Who Aren’t There Anymore, then, no curveballs are thrown. However, the band’s debt to OMD and New Order is increasingly