ISLANDS - A Sleep & A Forgetting

The sheer vanity of pop. There's something icy in the way Islands, once prodigies within the already prodigious Canadian scene, have traveled from bad (the previous “Vapours“) to good (this “A Sleep & A Forgetting”) taste, while losing sight of the focal point along the way: that, beyond the outfit chosen (from a wardrobe already explored at length), the songs ultimately have to communicate something.

And to think that this latest, fourth album by Nick Thorburn's band stems from his own conversation with a piano and the memories of a love cut short: the frontman even recalls that the record was begun on Valentine's Day, and it's being released on that very day now.

Well, it's really hard to squeeze out of “A Sleep & A Forgetting” even a drop of that introspection that was never Islands' strong suit anyway. It's undoubtedly an elegant record, with guitar embroidery framing some rather emphatic attempts at piano (“Never Go Solo,” the only track still showing a glimmer of the band's prog leanings) and keyboard (the Krieger-esque “Can't Feel My Face” and “Hallways”). “My take on soul,” is how Thorburn describes the hazy piano-bar mood (“This Is Not A Song”) that forms the common recipe running through the album's songs.

And yet what prevails is the bland refinement of a pop that isn't a dream, just a pale, faded yawn. The lyrics certainly don't help, offering a rather colorless rehash of the usual broken-hearted pop clichés, steeped in a clear case of retromania (“No Crying”).

Particularly unfortunate too is the harmonized little ditty “Oh Maria,” which comes across more as a parody of Fleet Foxes than an attempt to enrich the record's sonic and compositional content in any way. This is a band that, having lost its initial drive, now finds itself struggling in the rearguard with somewhat mediocre rehashes and clumsy changes of direction. Not an exceptional case, incidentally, among the ranks of bands that made up the heart of the Canadian scene a few years back.

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16/02/2012