Leo Shaw
Entertainment Editor
Less than a year after the latest album, and after a whirlwind of a fully live-tweeted recording process, indie fans have been graced with a new Islands album.
After such a lightning-fast production schedule, “Vapours,” which was released on Sept. 22, may be the band’s slowest, most deliberate and most cohesive effort to date.
From the start, Islands has been a rare bird. A phoenix that rose from the ashes of Canadian hipsters Unicorns, the band demonstrated a scattered but confident flash of genius with their 2006 debut, “Return to the Sea.” 2008 saw the release of “Arm’s Way,” a full-speed ahead charge of instrumentation, electric twang and darker imagery than anyone expected.
All the clever lyricism, familiar vocal flourishes and guitar work are included in “Vapours,” but on the first listen these elements sound boiled down and covered with a sickly-sweet electro-pop.
With each subsequent listen through, one appreciates the intricacy of the electronic percussion more, and a whole host of sonic allusions (both deliberate and unintentional) emerge.
“Vapours” doesn’t have a big personality, but it compensates with the small details. Within “On Foreigner,” arguably the album’s best track, listeners can make out the vocals of fellow indie giant Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks” in the intro and a melodic shout-out to Buddy Holly’s “Maybe Baby.” That’s all before the chorus starts. “EOL” is similarly masterful in its classic rock background riff with Nick Thorburn’s trademark vocal rambling.
The album’s diversity doesn’t end there. The second track, “No You Don’t,” could easily be a Flight of the Conchords song, right down to Jemaine’s singing style. “The Drums” sounds like the backing track for a hip-hop song, complete with beat and a “whoo” at the start.
“Heartbeat,” the oddball track, starts off with an ‘80s synth line and goes into a blatantly (and gloriously) Auto-tuned Kanye-bash of a chorus. They went there, and it’s still a good song.
It’s obvious from moments like these that the playful spirit of the band is alive and well, but on a larger scale, the homogeneity of the album’s sound bogs it down. “Return to the Sea” was refreshing because of its extreme breadth, and “Arm’s Way” still shined because of risky new elements like frenetic string arrangements and caribbean rhythms. In “Vapours,” the individual tracks are like snowflakes, some more intricate than others and almost all of them satisfying in a subtly unique way. The overall effect of a full listen through can be tiresome, though, just as a whole winter takes away the initial novelty of the first snowfall.
Thorburne stated he meant to strip down the band’s output from the extravagance of “Arm’s Way” to a sound driven by guitar, bass, drum machines and synth. This “less is more” strategy yielded variety within a small range of sound, but that sound isn’t quite enough to propel the whole album. On top of that, sluggish and forgettable tracks like “Devout” and “Shining” merely add another layer of vocal and guitar sheen.
“Vapours” may not sound like anything special at first. As a whole it doesn’t surpass Islands’ debut, but there are enough amazing little moments throughout the album to make the it worth buying. Pick it up, put it on shuffle and wait for some musical magic to happen.
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