Future Islands performing in London on November 21st, 2017 (Alberto Pezzali / Live4ever)
Live, Future Islands make gratifying and terrifying more than merely similar words. Tonight, they’re almost the same emotion.
Future Islands, and Samuel T. Herring in particular, are always so distinct, but never more so than when playing live. There’s a lot of synth bands, but none are anything like this.
Watching a mutton-chopped serial killer from the seventies in business casual clothes dance like a crazed shaman, whilst schizophrenically alternating vocally between The Associates’ Billy McKenzie and Sepultura’s Max Cavalera, should be terrifying.
The obvious twist is to say ‘it’s not’, but if we’re being honest, it kind of is. Exhilaratingly so. But it’s this feeling of danger, of someone on the cusp of who knows what, which makes them so exciting.
Songs like In the Fall and Cave alternate wildly both in speed and chaos. One minute they’re tempered, barely constrained and emotional, the next they’re manic, wild-eyed and intense. Musically, they’re always restrained, it’s a suggestive sound that leaves more questions. You feel there is something under the surface that you can’t quite fathom.
But it’s Herring’s contradictory performance style that takes the band’s live performances to a sublime place. On Vireo’s Eye he’s emotive, angry. During the beautiful, heartbreaking A Song For Our Grandfathers his melancholy and desperation is clawing, almost uncomfortable. Both are enthralling, powerful moments.
Some moments, however, manage to capture all of this at once – Dream Of You And Me is one such moment. It’s a fantastic song that transforms when performed live.
Future Islands performing in London on November 21st, 2017 (Alberto Pezzali / Live4ever)
Like the band, it feels more raw, more alive. It’s an entirely different creature.
Like the band, live it has a different meaning. What you thought you knew, you now question.
Like the band, the familiar isn’t so familiar anymore.
Of course, they also play Seasons (Waiting On You), and it’s something to see. Even Herring at his most ferocious can’t keep the crowd at bay. This is their Dr Jekyll moment, and suddenly the mass is alive, writhing and passionate.
An astonishingly beautiful single, now it’s a compelling call to arms. It means so much to so many, but probably something different to every one of them. Yet it’s still a shared experience, and that’s when music is at its most potent.
Ultimately, this sums up the night. Everyone is getting something very different from the very same thing. Future Islands live are ferocious and unfettered by expectation, yet each song is so fragile it beggars belief how they can repeatedly hit them so hard.
Live they seem to be trying to obliterate what makes their music so beautiful, yet it only makes it even more powerful. Live, some of the most delicate moments have the most ferocious roar, and some of the most powerful moments are the most tender.
It’s a topsy-turvy world watching them live. It can even be frightening. But really, what should interesting and exciting music look like?
It should look like a mutton-chopped serial killer from the seventies in business casual clothes dancing like a crazed shaman, whilst schizophrenically alternating vocally between The Associates’ Billy McKenzie and Sepultura’s Max Cavalera. And it should be as frightening as that sounds, because that’s exciting.
In fact it’s more than that, it’s terrifyingly gratifying.