"It’s like a light going off inside my mind," Islands honcho Nicholas Thorburn sings on the seven-minute epic "In the Rushes" from his band’s latest effort, Arm’s Way, out Tuesday. But which light? Thorburn has a bunch of them on, all at once.
Is it the one that shines, marrying Islands’ skewed pop workmanship with Talking Heads’ pre-funk efforts like More Songs About Buildings and Food or Fear of Music? Or the one that spotlights Islands’ kinship with The Who, as Thorburn takes time in the extended coda of "In the Rushes" to shout "You are forgotten" the same way Pete Townshend shouted "You are forgiven" during "A Quick One While He’s Away" on The Who’s 1966 effort A Quick One? Is it the same light that shone on the film Rushmore, which used "You are Forgiven" as a hilarious soundtrack for Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray’s attempts to sabotage each other?
Thorburn is no dummy: He’s offering up these expansive connections to situate his outsider pop, which nevertheless feels like it floats without context from track to track, only to eventually pull you in with citations like the few above. Perhaps that’s why Arm’s Way features two tracks that top the seven-minute mark and one that blows past 11: Thorburn needs all the time he can get to tip his musical hat to his influences, right before he leaves them behind.
"To a Bond" sounds like it dropped off of Ziggy Stardust for about three minutes before it metamorphoses into a string freakout that sounds little like anything you’ve heard before. "Vertigo (It’s a Crime)" feels like something from Meddle-era Pink Floyd before transmogrifying into a murderous love song (Dig that ditch, and ditch that dirt / It’s just a body now) that could have easily served as a soundtrack to Hitchcock’s seminal thriller of the same name.
But those are just influences, which Thorburn’s earnest crooning self-consciously tries to strip away as the ambitious Arm’s Way unfolds. Like its name implies, Islands’ demented sonics float in solitude, even as they are connected to the Earth that spawned them. More often than not, its ambition outstrips its failures, especially on the aforementioned epics. Thorburn needs time to unwind, so while the short pop masterpiece may be out of his reach this time around, listeners may find not only what they need in his lengthy expositions, but the cultural roots of those meanderings as well.
Photo courtesy Anti Records
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