Wave Like Home

Future Islands are a post-wave dance band from North Carolina -- now residing in the fertile 'music capital of awesome' Baltimore. Future Islands play a terse yet passionate music wrought from a stripped back palette. Gerrit Welmers' cartwheeling synthesizer melodies tumble across the austere wilderness of William Cashion's post punk bass pulse, driven ever forward by Eric Murillo's ecstatic feel for rhythm. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the band's sound however takes shape in the form of Sam Herring's distinctive guttural vocal, delivered as Glenn Danzig if he ever found himself in a Shakespearean tragedy. Wave Like Home is a breathless testament to romance and grasping chances, forever enthralled to the optimism of trying again. It's a sincere and sometimes painfully honest record about chasing broken dreams and finding courage in a forsaken heart. An album infatuated with timescales like always and forever. From the broken elegy of woozy opener 'Pangea' through the euphoric fun trips of 'Old Friend' and the upbeat 'Seize A Shark,' the album never drifts far from reflection amongst its highest highs. For every throbbing track recalling breakneck pursuits there's a soulful reminder of the quieter side of a melodramatic heart. 'Beach Foam' is glorious, swelling synth work perfectly capturing the crashing waves that incite such hungry philosophy in the song. 'In these arms I can feel my home, breaking from inside' sings a desperate and forlorn Samuel on title track 'Wave Like Home.' 'Save me from loving you always,' he retorts on sober paean 'Heart Grows Old.' For all the hope and regret felt across the album it is rather apt that final track 'Little Dreamer' catches up with Future Islands at their most starry-eyed. Not even the chatter of birdsong can drown out the unabashed sweet sentiment of this closing song, so deeply consumed it holds a torch up into the darkness of the coldest corner of humanity.