islands’ brilliant 2006 release return to the sea was on a multitude of best of lists last year, including my own. it’s a catchy and infectious album, with a strangely playful yet messy tension, probably a side effect of the fuzzily reactionary drugs that are added to the water system in montreal instead of common fluoride like here in the states. what, you didn’t know? yeah, its main side effect is the awesome music coming from that city these days, some of which is made by ex-unicorns nick diamonds and j’aime tambeur, who started the band islands.
return to the sea is considerably more polished and has less of a silly edge than the more shuffly and scrambled unicorns stuff. islands mixes their slightly morbid lyrics with giddy, sugar-coated melodies that build in sections and incorporate interesting instrumentation like strings and and reeds and horns. they utilize a wide variety of talented characters to add these elements for their live show, including woody guthrie’s grandson…who knew?
anyway, to paraphrase my favourite song “volcanoes”….hello, i’m a demon. and i’m here to tell you that the world will end in 2007. this apocalyptic event could happen any time now but will hopefully hold off to let you read islands’ answers to superstarcastic’s famous 5 questions first.
1. when historians listen to your most recent CD 1000 years from now, what will they say?
they’ll say, “oh dear lord, i can’t believe that people are still listening to cds after all these years.”
2. if you could play a show with any band/musician living or dead, who would you pick and why?
I would say Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, only because i have a huge crush on jenny lewis.
3. what is the strangest band-related dream (one of) you have had?
I know people will think we’re spoiled because we rented a tour bus, but this one time when we slept on this bus, we were in california, and i guess it’s kind of known for earthquakes, or is that just me? i was sleeping and i woke up from a shake, freaked out thinking that we were in an earthquake. turns out the bus just turned on and was turning somewhere. that’s not a funny story. sorry
4. what do your fans look like?
they look like they want to say hi or throw stuff at you, but are too shy to do it.
5. what bullshit do you run into at most every show that makes you think “man, this bullshit again?”
it’s waking up in the morning and realising we can’t take number twos on our tour bus.
bonus question: why won’t you forget to tip your bartender?
to get to the other side?
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Comment by Sam E. — March 1, 2007 @ 1:13 am
For some reason, I think this is my favorite answer so far to question #4.