Three weeks ago was a really rough
week for me. That Friday I had to make a phone interview with someone that
would have a huge impact on my future. I spent the whole week in a state of
pure-terror; I felt like death. Fittingly that same week a year before was probably
the worst week in my life, culminating in a terrible moment that occurred exactly
one year before the dreaded phone call. In short, I really hate the third week
in February and wanted an album that would help me through it. Fortunately for
me that week, Islands’ new album A Sleep
& a Forgetting came out that week and boy was it exactly what the
doctor ordered.
A huge fan of The Unicorns, Islands
always sort of confused me. I fully understand that a band’s attitude, music,
and sound of a band is the result of the combination of those of each member in
the band; it’s ridiculous to assume that a every band that contains a musician
or two in common will sound alike. Yet it always confuses me to hear Nick
Thornburn sing Islands’ songs. I am so used to hearing him on Who Will Cut Our Hair When Were Gone (I
listen to it at least once a week), that I feel like his unique voice belongs
to the extremely low-fi sound of The Unicorns. I got the same feeling when I
went and saw Mister Heavenly live in Philly last fall (an amazing super group
composed of Nick Thornburn, Honus Honus of Man Man and Joe Plummer of Modest
Mouse). This feeling was only exacerbated by the dramatically different tone of
A Sleep & a Forgetting.
The music was really soothing to me
during my rough week, dark and introspective like I felt, yet hopeful enough to
cheer me up. The album sounds like quiet, resevered sadness and hope. It is not
the intense pain of a recently broken heart, but the subtle mixture of happiness
and sadness of looking back on something lost long ago. As Nick himself puts it, “This record deals with loss, with memory
and forgetting and with dreaming. I started writing it on Valentine’s Day and
it’s coming out on Valentine’s Day.” I couldn’t have
described the feeling of the album better myself (also the black rose album cover is a nice touch).
A
Sleep & a Forgetting is a lot more introspective and subdued than
Island’s previous work. Though it has its moments where it rocks out (Can’t Feel My Face and Never Go Solo), even these tracks are
fairly low key. Yet this softer nature does not mean it is bad, in fact I think
it is a great change of pace; too often bands get caught up in the same sound. I feel as though when people look
back on Islands’ discography, this album will be viewed as the one where they really
changed up their formula for the first time. And they did a fantastic job at
that; though it is definitely different, it excels in what it did differently.
Yet at the same time, the album is clearly an Islands album.
One interesting thing I noticed
while listening to the album was how much it reminded me of the aforementioned
Mister Heavenly, specifically Out of
Loves’ b-side. This makes perfect sense seeing as Out of Love was recorded just months before the Valentine’s Day
that work on A Sleep & a Forgetting started.
Of course, they differ greatly in the sense that Out of Love is clearly influenced by doo-wop and A Sleep & a Forgetting is clearly
not. However, the attitude and the emotions are similar. I hope whatever had
Nick down at that time has cleared up and that he is feeling less dark and down
now. Partly because I never want another person to feel down and partly because
I would love Islands’ next album to have another tone switch and really rock
out.
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