Islands’ second album no fun

By Jordan Sargent
May 9, 2008

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I wonder if people remember that Islands exist, or if anyone actually cared about them in the first place. I ask because even I, a fan, forgot of their existence until fairly recently, even in the face of bands like Vampire Weekend and High Places, whose pink-polo islandpop was done at times just as exceptionally by Islands merely two years ago on their smattering debut Return to the Sea.

In retrospect, though Return to the Sea is a fine indie-pop record, the band itself is kind of boring. Front man Nick Thorburn — whose old stage name was Nick Diamonds — coasted into Islands after the dissolution of The Unicorns, his former band that put out one fine indie-pop record. In between the end of his old band and the start of his new one, Thorburn smartly played up the tension between himself and Alden Penner, the other front man of The Unicorns, in a bastardized version of Dave vs. Sammy for people who read Pitchfork too often. Meanwhile, the rest of the band has some violin players.

Would anyone have cared about Return to the Sea if Thorburn weren’t Islands’ singer? Maybe, but fuck if I know if the album is better than the last Headlights or Born Ruffians albums or whatever indie-pop records are getting three stars and yawns nowadays. The point is Arm’s Way makes me wonder whether Islands are actually worth caring about — whether or not I should take the four great songs from their debut and call it a day or keep giving Arm’s Way that “one more listen.”

It’s not a bad record per se, but rather an average one, and maybe I feel duped for having believed it could be otherwise. Arm’s Way is Islands’ sort-of prog, very ‘70s record, which we know immediately because the cover depicts some pre-historical fantasy world, except there’s also a car. We also know this because the opening song “The Arm” slowly builds up with smoldering chords and plucks into a crescendo of swooping and slicing strings — the kind of cheesy, gloppy shit that Electric Light Orchestra pulled off just a little more deftly 30 years ago.

“The Arm” is an okay song, but it immediately outlines Arm’s Way’s ultimate problem: The album strains, very mightily, to reach the heights of Return to the Sea’s micro- Zeppelin epic “Swans (Life After Death)”— the song in the band’s back catalog that most resembles the stuff on the new album — but it almost always comes up short.

Songs like “The Arm,” “We Swim” and “In the Rushes” find Thorburn and the band turning up their piercing guitars while he wails in an attempt to bring the songs to the mountain- stomping climax that was “Swans’” last minute. In nearly every instance, they fail.

Two other problems plague Arm’s Way, as well. For one, the band has limited its sonic palette. The album is written almost completely for electric guitar and violin, which robs it of the playfulness and toy box foolishness that made Return to the Sea so rewarding at times. Sometimes that spirit bleeds into these songs, like in the sublime and winsome bridge of “J’Aime Vous Voire Quitter,” which recalls Return to the Sea’s bouncy and elastic “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby.” When the band reverts, Arm’s Way finally resonates.

What’s most detrimental, though, is that Arm’s Way is no fun. Not that good music has to be fun, but Arm’s Way seems overly serious, even coming from Thorburn, a notorious jester. If you don’t believe it, check out their new press photos, where they’re wearing all black. We should have seen it coming.

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