Islands' new release, Ski Mask, is an album "about being
angry," says front man Nicholas Thorburn. If you have somehow
missed their previous releases and this happens to be your first experience
with the band, you may remember Thorburn's quirky lyrics and poppy songwriting
style from The Unicorns, who disbanded in 2005. Since then, Thorburn has, with Islands,
evolved his songwriting style and developed deeper lyrical content resulting in
lush, often multi-instrumental pop compositions. Islands' style is one of drama
and theatrics, sometimes bordering on vaudevillian. Ski Mask is an exploratory move for the band into slightly darker
territory, and if you haven't been exposed to Islands' sound previously, it's ok,
because this record is, as Thorburn explains, "an essential introduction to
Islands—it's everything we've ever been about."
The single from the album, "Wave
Forms," starts this essential journey across the band's archipelago with stark
piano chords and vocals in the aforementioned theatrical style. Then in comes a
familiar pitch-bendy synth sound, a tone leftover and repurposed from Thorburn's
days in The Unicorns. Islands' sound is fittingly tropical, with touches
throughout of a marimba and bouncy bass lines. The instrumentals suggest a kind
of naïve optimism that counter the melancholy of Thorburn's vocals and keep the
pop songs from becoming overly sugary-sweet.
A larger theme involving the stage and
theater is directly evident in Thorburn's lyrics on the second track, "Death
Drive," where he sings, "I did a line from a script that I wrote." There are
other instances of this, and each time, the music shifts in a way that would be
more fitting in a Broadway musical than a traditional pop song. In this way, Ski Mask represents the plight of the
performer, striving for success and recognition. Thorburn says in a press release, "For better or
worse, this record kind of sums up my experience thus far with being in a band.
Like the third act of a movie—just after it seems like all hope is lost, that's
when the big breakthrough moment happens. For Islands, this is us waiting for
the breakthrough moment." It is unclear if this waiting for that breakthrough
moment is about the present state of Islands, or merely a reflection about that
experience. It would be surprising that a band with the amount of
recognition in the Indie world would still be waiting for that moment, as it
seems that they have experienced that breakthrough and, in fact, still exist as
accomplished musicians, even after coming out and being widely
regarded.
Best digested as a whole piece, Ski Mask is a chronicle of the group's experiences as struggling
artists, summing up personal feelings of the individuals involved, while pooling
sounds from past releases, resulting in a record that represents the whole of
the band and all they have achieved thus far. Islands have always had a
theatrical style, but on previous records it has come across more disjointed
and thematically varied from song to song. Ski
Mask stands strong as a singular composition, and if Islands are indeed
still looking for that breakthrough moment, perhaps this self-referential piece
about the frustrations of striving for
success may also be self-prophesizing toward a fulfilling career and, ultimately,
a happy ending to that "third act of a movie," as Thorburn puts it.
Grade: B
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