If there’s one moment that Baltimore synth-poppers Future Islands are likely to be remembered for, it’s frontman Samuel T Herring’s brilliantly impassioned rendition of Seasons (Waiting on You) on David Letterman’s TV show in 2014, which rightly became a viral sensation online. On the one hand, as career-defining performances go, it’s infinitely preferable to the Stone Roses at Reading 96, say. But on the other, it’s going to cast a long shadow over everything else they do. Their 2017 album, The Far Field, for example, certainly had its moments – just nothing that cut through in the same way as Seasons.
Their sixth album finds them treading familiar ground, Herring’s mannered vocals ensuring that For Sure comes across like a less emotionally detached Power, Corruption & Lies-era New Order, a comparison that’s cemented by William Cashion’s hooky – and Hooky – basslines. Indeed, this influence is a vein that runs through many of As Long As You Are’s best songs, most notably the intensely moving Plastic Beach, which addresses how love can help to overcome body dysmorphia (“Spent a lifetime in the mirror/Picking apart what I couldn’t change”). Even when the tempo – and urgency – of these songs occasionally drops, they are rescued from mediocrity by Herring’s affecting lyrics: several songs contemplate the wreckages of toxic relationships with unflinching honesty. But there’s redemption here, too. Hit the Coast finds him putting the bad times behind him, and heading for a brighter future, “flying and free”.
