Future Islands — Wave Like Home

Future Islands specialize in wonky,often dense yet criminal additive brand of off-kilter 80’s retro pop meets post punk crunch ‘n’ grime. Think a more active, up-beat and positive take on the kind of thing John Maus has been doing over the last few of years. But Future Islands are far from a copy of Maus work; this their debut(after an 7 inch and a few self releases) is an wonderful self assured, well played and distinctive slice of retro wonderful-ness.

The albums tracks are an glorious often dense mesh of: throbbing 80’s bass guitar lines, meaty synth chops and muffled synthetic drum bop. But the thing that really sells the already highly memorable & quirky songs are the wonderfully distinctive and often powerful vocals of lead singer Samuel Herring ; who sounds like a improbable mixture of Billy Idol & Roland Gift (of Fine young Cannibals). His voice is rough, smoky, soulful and has an almost reggae like feel to it in places, as well as often been quite theatrically camp yet hurt shooting the already good songs to be great songs. And in the great pop tradition the songs are cut short around the three minute mark each-meaning the albums 9 tracks come in around the half-an-hour mark making- this short sweet yet focused and complete filler-less.

With seemingly so many new bands now taking up 80’s  synth pop and  post punk thing as an influence and focus Future Islands stand out from the crowd with Herrings one of a kind vocals and their damn memorable yet damaged song craft. Really Wave Like Home is a near perfect slice of retro and wonky wonder- a truly great debut and I cant wait to hear what they do next.