“Hey everyone,
In an effort to make our shows as safe as possible for our fans, venue staff and
the people up on stage, we are updating our COVID-19 policy. Proof of full
vaccination will now be required for entry to all Islands shows. It's not the
panacea we hoped for in getting to the other side of this pandemic, but it's
something, and this is where we've landed. We will no longer accept negative
tests for entry, so if you were on the fence about getting vaccinated, now is
the time to do it for crying out loud! (If it's down to the wire, J&J can
provide full immunization in two weeks).
Keep sweet,
Nick”
At the end of 2016, after ten years and seven albums, Nick Thorburn quietly
decided to put an end to Islands and retire from music. There was no
announcement or farewell, only two shows at Webster Hall in New York and the
Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles to commemorate the tenth anniversary
of the band’s widely adored debut album Return to the Sea. “This seemed like a
perfect time to put a cap on things and close out the circle,” Thorburn says. He
switched focus, selling and producing a pilot television script, creating a
graphic novel with preeminent comics publisher Fantagraphics, and scoring a few
films and the occasional BBC radio show. Thorburn’s years-long leave of absence
resulted in a kind of rock and roll Rumspringa, with Nick unable to shake the
bug for making records. After a sudden burst of creativity from a few weeks of
working in his kitchen studio, Thorburn had written dozens and dozens of songs
informed by everything from late-70s avant-disco to Thea Lim’s time-travel novel
An Ocean of Minutes, and would write dozens more over the next year and a half,
almost all with a clear focus on rhythm and groove. Read More Thorburn decided
that if he was going to make another Islands record, he’d do it without a
deadline. He also wanted to work with outside producers, which would be his
first time since 2009’s Vapours. He reached out to that album’s producer, Chris
Coady (Beach House, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) , and asked Islands drummer Adam Halferty
and guitarist Geordie Gordon to join him in a recording session at Sunset Sound
in Los Angeles. “At the time I still wasn’t sure what this new music was going
to be, or if coming back to Islands even made any sense,” says Thorburn. “But
once we started playing, it quickly became clear this would be the next Islands
album.” Five years after Islands went dormant, Nick resurrected the band, who
reemerge this year with their 8th album, Islomania. More than two years in the
making, Islomania is a culmination of things Thorburn learned from the
intervening period and all the things he’d accomplished during the band’s
initial ten year run. That initial session at Sunset Sound also featured Mike
Stroud (RATATAT) on guitar, who then invited Thorburn to his studio in the
Catskills, where they worked on another song (“A Passionate Age”). With Islands
bassist Evan Gordon soon brought into the fold, Islomania slowly came to life
over the coming year, with more sessions in LA involving producer Patrick Ford
(Tanlines, !!!) and Coady. When the songs had been sufficiently finessed, they
brought on John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, St. Vincent) to mix and Joe LaPorta
(Vampire Weekend, David Bowie) to master. “I was determined to let the record
breathe, let the process take as long as it needed. I wanted the freedom to
rework the songs as we went along,” says Thorburn, noting that the band’s
simultaneously released 2016 albums Taste and Should I Remain Here at Sea? were
completely recorded in a three-week span. Through this unhurried process,
Islands found an entirely new form for their idiosyncratic blend of art rock and
synth-pop, ultimately arriving at their strongest record yet. Over the course of
ten groove-heavy songs, Islomania flits from the ridiculous to the sublime. On
the surface, these songs are all blissful hedonism, tracing the reckless abandon
of a progressively wild Friday night. But pick at the scab and there’s a
darkness. Themes of futility and repetition (“Closed Captioning”), a yearning
for transcendence (“Natural Law Party”), a need for understanding (“A Passionate
Age”) and a deep desire for vulnerability and intimacy (“We Like to Do it With
the Lights On”) thread the album. “Tension and release exist throughout. Every
song here begins bottled up, but there’s always a cathartic release by the end.
There’s darkness and doubt in every crevice of this record, but there’s always a
release,” Thorburn says. After kicking off with the album’s sweetly tropical
title track, Islands intensify the mood with “We Like to Do It With The Lights
On”: a dance song whose dreamy exuberance betrays a more profound message. “I
wanted this record to be a celebration of finding joy and pleasure in life,”
says Thorburn. “I think it’s important to remember that, despite the darkness
and conflict and pain, there’s still goodness in the world.” Thorburn’s distinct
brand of marrying upbeat and urgent melodies with comically dark lyrics remain
intact, with songs like “Closed Captioning” interweaving jagged horn
arrangements with grim lyrics about the end of the world. “That one came from
having to turn on closed captioning while watching a ‘prestige’ TV show because
the style of acting nowadays seems to be everyone mumbling,” Thorburn says. “I
thought the concept of closed captioning was a fairly decent metaphor for the
divisive nature of this country, and the inability to understand one another.”
The Stroud-produced track “A Passionate Age” rides the line between dizzy and
chilling in its vocoder-warped reflection on modern life’s endless chatter. And
on “Never Let You Down”, Islands present one of Islomania’s most tender-hearted
tracks, a radiant yet mournful piece of synth-pop. “The album is all about
transcending- In the political, the spiritual, the emotional and the physical
sense,” Thorburn says. “After Natural Law Party” – which features an
interpolation of Arthur Russell’s early disco outfit Loose Joints and their song
Tell You (Today)- “culminates in a plea to ‘set my body free’, transcendence is
achieved. Never Let You Down serves as the beginning of a come down, though. The
drugs have worn off, the doubt is creeping in, but you push on, try to keep the
party going. It’s a bit of a reckoning, or a gradual return to earth- with
hopefully a little enlightenment in tact. There’s a failed love song in there,
too- this hopeless idea that you can always be there for someone, but both the
narrator and the subject know it’s a lie, though they choose to believe it,”
Thorburn says. By the time Islomania closes out with “Gore” – a song Thorburn
synopsizes as “the bloom coming off the rose”- the spirit has returned to the
body, descended. All that’s left now is death. And this is Thorburn’s party
record!! Despite the heaviness, the delicately articulated moods, and the
moments of melancholy and unease, the album sustains a heady effervescence
that’s undeniably tied to the spirit of its creation. “This record is way more
playful than I usually allow myself to be, or have allowed myself to be in the
last 15 years of making music with Islands,” says Thorburn. “It made me remember
why I got into this in the first place. I want everything to have meaning and
intention, but I also want to leave room to get a little lost. I want the
listener to feel enchanted by the music, and I think we absolutely achieved that
with this one. This is the best album I’ve ever made, and I don’t think it would
have been possible without leaving it all behind.”
Event Venue
2501 Kettner Blvd San Diego CA 92101, San Diego, United States
Tickets