★★★★★
Available on: 4AD Future Islands have, for several years now, stood as a bastion of sincerity in a sea of winking pastiche - illogically so when you consider vocalist Samuel T. Herring's vaudevillian persona and the band's Moog-y retro-Americana stylings, which ordinarily would form a layer to hide behind. But as critic Neil Ashman has observed, Herring and co are somewhat of a paradox in their ability to wring oodles of pathos from the apparatus of artifice...
- www.factmag.com
2014-05-09
★★★★★
As music promotion shifts and readjusts to align with the internet age, a band's crossover moment can come from a variety of sources other than a catchy lead single or an attention-grabbing video clip. For Baltimore's Future Islands, that moment was a YouTube clip of a live performance on Letterman. The song Seasons (Waiting On You) certainly has its pop smarts, but the most divisive factor of the band - Samuel T...
- www.beat.com.au
2014-04-15
★★★★★
"Right time, wrong record," read the text to my phone from a friend who counts as a Future Islands early-adopter. I knew immediately she was referring to the stream of the band's latest album, the misleadingly titled, Singles, that debuted earlier that morning. She had written the only review that would matter, even as Pitchfork rushed to declare the record an "8.0", the band's most favorable write-up to date...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-04-08
★★★★★
Samuel T. Herring looks like the kind of guy who would break your knees - or, given his stature, gnaw on them mercilessly - if you ever owed him money. But as the lead singer of the Baltimore indie-pop trio Future Islands, he sounds like the most sensitive soul on the planet. The band won a new legion of followers with a stunning live performance on the David Letterman show last month, during which Herring wore ill-fitting clothes, swiveled his hips like Tom Jones and pounded his chest like a...
- www.sfgate.com
2014-04-06
★★★★★
Tweet No Red Herring Like many who attended this year's SXSW, I was regaled by festival darlings Future Islands, a band whose buzz now rivals frontman Samuel T. Herring's robust vocal prowess; it's perfect timing for a band looking to release their fourth album. Their first release on 4AD, Singles points to what's more often than not missing in the pseudo-indie scene: pure artistic confidence...
- www.mxdwn.com
2014-03-28
★★★★★
Future Island's Samuel Herring is the antithesis of the classic pop front man. With thinning hair, a slightly dumpy frame and a tendency to rock the pleated pants and tucked in t-shirt look, he'd get sideways looks on the office party dance floor let alone the stages of Austin' SXSW showcases. But that's exactly what his band has been doing over the last fortnight...
- www.undertheradar.co.nz
2014-03-26
★★★★★
You could be forgiven for calling Future Islands overwrought. Hailing from Baltimore, home of the infamous Wham City collective (who subscribe to a strict "more is more" philosophy), there's an air of seriousness about their work that you don't hear in other modern synthpop bands. Their earliest work was almost something of a novelty, playing off the stark contrast between the music and the vocals - while the music often spotlighted bright, catchy keyboard melodies, the vocals sounded straight...
- thequietus.com
2014-04-01
★★★★★
opinion by BENJI TAYLOR < @BenjiTaylorMade >
The "manopuase": that curious time in a man's life when, burdened with a heady sense of his own mortality, and acutely conscious of the legacy he'll bequeath to posterity, he arrives at a cross-roads where he must decide: What kind of Man do I want to be? Samuel T Herring - prophet and frontman for Baltimore synth-pop outfit Future Islands - has hit this point in his life earlier than most men...
- prettymuchamazing.com
2014-03-26
★★★★★
Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring has an energy, a physical aura, that moves along a single line. On one end is a hangdog character with tucked-in shirt and pleated khakis and on the other is an ursine man-monster wresting primordial sounds from his heart. Until recently, we could find Herring only in the small clubs where Future Islands relentlessly toured. With Herring as ringleader, these shows got pretty rowdy for a three-piece synth pop band...
- pitchfork.com
2014-03-25
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