Islands Hopping

Islands

Arm's Way

Roxy Satarzadeh

6 out of 10

You went to all of their shows. You sent in the $7 needed to join their fan club. You wore their T-shirt everyday straight for a week. And how did they repay you? By breaking up. Such is the relationship saga of many fans of the phenomenal indie rock band the Unicorns. May they rest in peace. As in other areas of life, however, there are never any real ends to relationships, only the beginnings of new ones. Such is the story of Islands, sprung from the ashes of the Unicorns.

Relationships certainly have their ups and downs, and bumps in the road are to be expected. Islands were started with the remaining members of the Unicorns, the fabulous indie-pop trio hailing from Montreal. When the Unicorns broke up, Nicholas Thorburn (A.K.A. Nick Diamonds) and Jamie Thompson (A.K.A. J'aime Tambeur) formed Islands and released their first studio album, Return to the Sea, in 2006. The album, which features Caspar David Friedrich's famous painting "Sea of Ice" on the cover, blended the pop melodies of the Unicorns with delicate acoustic sounds and vocals. When Return to the Sea was released, it set off what I would deem the "honeymoon stage" of the relationship. The album was great, a continuation of Thompson and Thorburn's work with the Unicorns.

Just after the release of Return to the Sea, Thompson announced he was leaving the band on accounts of fame not being the most important item on his agenda. After some extensive touring, Islands are back, sans Thompson and led by Thorburn (main vocals, synthesizer, guitar). I was stoked when the sophomore album, Arm's Way, leaked this past April. Hearing it, unfortunately, brought forth that rocky point in any relationship. The album is by no means bad, but it's certainly no Return to the Sea. I guess that means the honeymoon's over.

Arm's Way was officially released in May. With Return to the Sea, you know you've got gold by the end of the first song. Arm's Way, on the other hand, is a lot more crowded, noisy, and in your face. Throughout the first album, there was an offbeat quality to many of the songs that reminded me in a good way of Radiohead. Now Islands, which, in addition to Thorburn, includes Aaron Harris (drums), Sebastian Chow (xylophone, violin), Alex Chow (synthesizer), Patrick Gregoire (guitar, saxophone) and Patrice Agbokou (bass guitar), just sound like they're trying too hard. Take the calypso jam session in the middle of "J'aime Vous Voir Quitter." And is that really necessary? I get that they're trying hard to appeal to the fans now that Jamie's gone, but lashing out at him through song titles is not the way to go about it.

Arm's Way doesn't feature the same style of whimsical songwriting I loved on Return to the Sea. No longer are they singing about volcanoes, swans, or Africa. Now the topics at hand are those of more prosaic "real life" situations such as break-ups, run-ins with the law, and ignorance. How mundane. Occasionally they still go on wild lyrical tangents, but they're no longer telling great, eccentric stories. Let's talk about Nick's voice for a second, too, because now it's just bordering on obnoxious. With the spotlight on him and not Jamie, he's taken full advantage of the mic and turned up his vocals to a feminine yelp. The instruments are definitely up a few notches as well, with the strings being overbearing as opposed to delicately beautiful like they were on Return to the Sea. Think Muse meets the Beach Boys as played by a high school ensemble.

Arm's Way does have some strong points. If you don't think of it in the context of Return to the Sea, the opening song, "Arm's Way," is pretty tolerable — catchy even. The strings immediately come in hard and fast. By the first turn, you start to recognize the playful keyboard sound that's a signature of old Islands. Unfortunately, in between Nick's loud exclamations and the Dixie Chicks-esque violin, the track is pretty cheesy. "Pieces of You" seamlessly follows and sounds as though it should score a scene from a Tim Burton film. The creative use of what sounds like staccato cello, washing away into a flowing guitar/drum chorus, adds an appropriately edgy sound to the album, at least for a moment.

"Creeper," my favorite track, melds the music and vocals together nicely, with the instruments backing the sinister tone of the lyrics. Nick sings, "Creeper in the home, crawling through the window/Grabbed the kitchen knife, couldn't stick it in the creeper." How...creepy. I couldn't stop humming the guitar hook. I couldn't get "Kids Don't Know Shit" out of my head for weeks, either. Though the lyrics are a tad lame ("Kids don't know shit/Everything they've learned is wrong"), the music is the closest you'll get to Return to the Sea with crunchy power chords and soft strings.

Still, I prefer the Islands with Jamie to the theatrical, overcrowded band that they are today. Throughout Arm's Way, Islands sound more...commercial. They're one step closer to sounding like most other mediocre bands out there today as opposed to the unparalled act they once were. Unless you are already a serious Islands fan, I would recommend checking out Return to the Sea before messing around with Arm's Way.

To get another perspective on Islands and Arm's Way, I spoke to my friend Josh Boyd from the band Hot Bodies. He introduced me to Jamie Thompson, and took me to my first Islands show. When I mentioned that I was reviewing Arm's Way, he seemed eager to lend a hand.

Me: Okay, so...Islands or Unicorns. Let's get that out of the way. Who do you prefer and why?

Josh: Unicorns, which is not to discount Islands in any way. Both Return to the Sea and Arm's Way are good records, but the instrumentation is more traditional, more familiar. Unicorns tapped into a sound almost unto its own genre… minimal arrangements of songs that defied logical song structure yet were still so unabashedly pop that you couldn't get the hooks out of your head. AND THE SYNTHS! Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone's sound is so defining that one must wonder if it's a record that can only be made once. And coming off of it, Return to the Sea is a logical next step, as is Arm's Way. But yeah, first reaction, Unicorns.

Me: Compared to what's out in the music scene today, why do Islands hold a special place in your heart?

Josh: They change with every album, and I think it's important for bands to develop an arc in their work to stay relevant.

Me: Where did you first hear about Return to the Sea?

Josh: I got it a couple months before it was released and it was the shit. It was totally epic which was so un-Unicorns, but at the same time, so totally the next phase for the Unicorns… it was still all about supremely catchy pop diverging from a commercially friendly song format.

Me: So now that you've heard Arm's Way, what do you think?

Josh: I actually think it's a misstep, but with that said, it's a good record. It's a move towards a more guitar-driven, almost classic rock sound on some tracks. The songwriting's still there but the approach is different. It's not a bad record, though. And Nick Thorburn has established himself as the kind of artist that can do some records that some of the fans might not get or take to as much as others. There are no bad Tom Waits records, no bad Nick Cave records, but there are definitely records by both artists (who share Islands' label) I don't favor as much as others.

Me: What do you think of the new line-up?

Josh: Thorburn doesn't roll with slouches. I saw them perform with Busdriver and 2Mex as Th' Corn Gangg last month, and yeah… they're totally sick musicians. J'aime Tambeur's an amazing drummer, though; you can hear his importance on Return to the Sea for sure.

Me: What direction do you see Islands going in?

Josh: Forward and changing. That's all I got.