Islands

The modernist pop band Islands have announced a select series of live dates across North America, with their Winnipeg appearance on March 3, 2012 at the West End Cultural Centre.

The critically acclaimed Montreal born and American based band (born out of the ashes of The Unicorns) will be performing songs from their highly anticipated new album A Sleep & A Forgetting which arrives in-stores on February 14th via Anti-Records.
The shows will be held in intimate venues recreating the confessional and deeply personal tone of the new album. While the new record continues the band’s inclination for crafting adventuresome state of the art pop music, this time band leader Nick Thorburn has infused the songs with a deeply personal introspection which gives the record a new and powerful emotional resonance.

“This album is far more personal than any I’ve made before,” Thorburn explains. “I left New York and came to Los Angeles and there was this piano where I was staying. And that’s where I wrote these songs. The record deals with loss, with memory and forgetting and with dreaming. I started writing it on Valentine’s Day and its coming out on Valentine’s Day.”

While admittedly listening to the classic soul of Smokey Robinson and The Temptations, Thorburn was also influenced by the introspective folk of artists such as Sibylle Baier, Maddy Prior and June Tabor. As a result the sound is less an approximation of classic Northern soul and more akin to the symphonic and cathartic pop of soul baring artists like Harry Nilsson and Roy Orbison. As the late Link Wray once said, “Soul music is pain.”

The new record offers all the shimmering sonic textures and irresistible melodies that have come to define Islands enduring appeal, but there is a deeply personal undercurrent to the songs, transforming personal unrest into affecting and soulful pop music.

“I’ve always hidden behind devices and humour but this album is just so much starker and open,” admits Thorburn. And it’s a risk that absolutely pays off. The new record features some of the most startling and memorable songs from a band which has continued to both evolve and/or surprise.

Idiot Glee website

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