Interview – Future Islands

“To forget a love is to regret,” sings Samuel T. Herring, as synths sparkle and fade around him on Future Islands’ new single ‘Before The Bridge’. It’s a sumptuous, dreamlike song, headily reminiscent of Bowie, The Cure and The Associates; a track that transports you backwards into the past — into lost loves, pain and regrets. That emotional tangle; caught between wanting to forget but also wanting to hold on.

It seems fitting, then, that the track is only available on limited edition 7”, with ‘Find Love’ on the flip. The band chose a nostalgic format for a nostalgic song. “When I was first getting into music,” says bassist William Cashion, “I loved searching for rare records that had songs unavailable anywhere else. I feel like more and more, that’s becoming a thing of the past, and we’re just doing our part to keep it alive.”

This sense of voyaging backwards permeates the rest of the Baltimore trio’s third LP, On The Water, both in terms of its lyrics and also physically — Herring, Cashion and programming wizard J. Gerrit Welmers returned home to North Carolina to record it, holing up in an old house by the sea, the sound of waves breaking on the sand nearby. Here’s what the band had to say about it…

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On The Water seems to have appeared just over a year after your second album, In Evening Air. That’s a fast turnaround.

WC: We pushed ourselves pretty hard to write and record this album.  We wanted to prove to ourselves that we could write, record and release an album in the same year. It was a stressful process, but we’re all proud of the album.

In Evening Air… On The Water… there’s also a track on the new one called ‘The Great Fire’. Is this use of the elements deliberate?

STH: The Great Fire is actually a reference to a poem by Jack Gilbert, of the same name. Its last line reads: “Love allows us to walk in the sweet music of our particular heart.”

Do you think this album sounds significantly different to In Evening Air?

STH: I think so, but it’s not a great departure for us. The songs are still undoubtedly us. However, the heart behind this album, its tone, is different. There’s a bit more understanding and space. In Evening Air had those moments, but it worked in a different way.

You recorded this one on the waterfront in Elizabeth City – is that why you gave the album that name?

STH: No, it’s the other way around, actually. We were searching for the inspiration that the water would provide. We wanted to be in that space so we could create our own in turn.

‘Before The Bridge’

How did where you recorded it have a bearing on the result?

STH: Well, the four songs written during the session, the late night walks to the water, our day-trip to the beach, enjoying our friends’ backyard in the sun, etc… these things couldn’t have happened just anywhere, the songs wouldn’t exist the way they do. The ghosts of that old house, the view of the shipyard, these were all very important components of this album.

Was it a different process to your previous records?

WC:  We went into the studio with about five or six songs, knowing that we wanted to write more material in the studio. For every Future Islands album, we have always started recording the album before it’s finished being written. The main difference with the On the Water process was that the new material was written and recorded while in the studio, unlike the new songs added to In Evening Air that were written during breaks from the studio.

On The Water feels calmer than the last record. Smoother, perhaps. Was that something you were aiming for, or just something that came out in the process?

STH: It’s definitely calmer. It wasn’t a thought really, just the way things came together. Before the album was even finished, we were hearing ourselves creating these new sounds, new tones, a softer palette. We started to grasp what it was that we were making, realising that we were headed in this direction. Even we were curious how it would turn out and how people would feel about it. I’m still really excited to see.

Are there more synths this time?

WC: If anything, I feel like this album is much more organic than In Evening Air — there are a lot of electric guitars this time, some cello, violin, marimba, and additional acoustic percussion on just about every song. I don’t think there are any more synths than any previous Future Islands album.

Were you listening to, and being inspired by, different music this time round?

WC: Sam and I both read Geeta Dayal’s analysis of Brian Eno’s Another Green World, and that proved to be very influential for me in the early stages of writing this album. I was also listening to a lot of Fleetwood Mac and Cocteau Twins.

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