Who knew? Volcanoes!

So there's this band I love. Let me tell you about them.

Islands.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to give them a chance. My brother had given me some of their CDs, plus The Unicorns, but I kind of shoved them away for awhile. I do this stupid thing sometimes where I really resist taking recommendations from people, even if I respect their opinions and taste. I don't know if it's a subconscious ego thing or what, but I totally do it. At least I admit it.

Old house

My last year of pharmacy school was basically a whole year of internships, aka paying school tuition and working for free. I wanted to adventure and explore as much as possible, and one of my internships was in Augusta, Maine. I had just started reading House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski before I left for Maine, and I decided to bring it with me. I was staying at a house with some other interns that was kind of old and eerie, not to mention it was November/December in Maine (cold and dark), and HoL is a super creepy and kind of terrifying book. The house creaked and made weird noises, so when I was by myself I liked to have music or the tv on. Especially if I was reading HoL. I loaded my iPod with new (to me) music before I left, and I decided to try out Islands and put on Return to the Sea on repeat. One thing that happens with this book is just a ridiculous amount of "weird coincidences." For example, there was a big part about ghosts in the book, and I took a can of Pepsi out of the fridge and it said "GHOST" on it. I have a stack of German phrases I need to stash somewhere, so I open the book to shove them in it and I glance at the page and the only word I make out on it before closing the book is "German." Creepy stuff. And just like, LOTS of it. I had Return to the Sea on in the background while I was reading for weeks. Every once in awhile I'd stop and listen and pick out a phrase or two in Return to the Sea that just seemed to fit so well with the story and the weird stuff going on (especially Humans - "what did we find? an underground design!" but there are so many more), and the album just seemed to FIT the book so well and kind of set the creepiness and uncomfortableness of the novel a bit over the edge. The album has a kind of... suspensefulness and eeriness of its own. There were a few times I just had to stop reading and turn the music off and turn on all the lights on in the house. I think everyone starts keeping a book of notes while they read HoL, and I jotted down a bunch of Islands quotes in mine that were kind of freakily spot on for the book. Apart from those connections, the album was really good, though kind of serious and a bit scary. I still think of Maine/HoL when I listen to it.

View from my hostel doorway

A few months later, I headed to Alaska for another internship. After flying from NYC to Seattle, and still another crazy long flight to Anchorage, I needed to find something to listen to. I had exhausted all my usual suspects and I am horrible at plane sleeping, so I had 3 more hours to kill. I put on Vapours and I swear I listened to On Foreigner about 15 times in a row on that flight. I was really excited to find good music to listen to, but I also thought this could actually be a band I could really get into. I didn't know anything about them really, but I thought they were still together and at that point most of the bands I liked weren't around anymore. I feel like Vapous is a bit less serious and more fun happy dance party than Return to the Sea. Again, I strongly correlate that album with my trip to Alaska and my internship up there. A bunch of the songs just immediately remind me of that plane trip and of time spent in Alaska. Anchorage was an amazing experience, but that's for another time. I went to a park down the road quite a bit while I was there, and kind of traded off reading Hemingway and listening to Islands while I stared off at the amazing landscape, and felt grateful for upstate NY winters that prepared me for that Alaskan "spring" full of snow and freezing temperatures.


At some point over the next few years I listened to the only other album they had out, Arm's Way, which I got kind of obsessed with for awhile. The lyrics were a bit... intense? Colorful? Graphic? Also again, a bit eerie. But it was still fun and I like singing about abominable snowmen while I'm driving down the highway. A Sleep & A Forgetting came out on Valentine's Day one year, and if you pre-ordered the album you got a Valentine from their lead singer (Nick) and yeah you better believe that immediately got put on my fridge. I was able to see them at Mississippi Studios in Portland minutes (literally) after getting off a plane from Utah. It was a really great show but it was SO WEIRD because everybody had chairs to sit in and it was an awkward distance from the stage so if you stood up it was weird and just... I dunno I didn't like the set up at all for their kind of show. They sounded great through and were really fun.

Music is subjective to taste, but one thing is a fact - Nick Thorburn is really great at Twitter (@Nickfromislands - finally verified. Congrats man). He had a pretty epic "hair club for men" infomercial twitter breakdown I woke up to one morning (you have great hair, nothing to worry about) right after I started following him. The most epic Nickfromislands twitter escapade, though, was Bendex Corp. Not sure why this got to be so hilarious, maybe because he was so serious about it and about it being legit. People made hilarious replies to ridiculous things Bendex was posting, Bendex posted videos of fake awards it got and testimonials to try and prove it was real, and I'm sad it's gone. The premise was it's a company that was going "live" on twitter on a certain date, but it was posting a ton already (mostly about how they were preparing for their twitter feed to go live, updating servers, and all the data and technical engineering stuff going into, yes, a twitter account), and then on that date it disappeared forever.

Some friends and I interacted with Bendex a bit, mostly asking for jobs and tweeting our concerns for Deb, and I still like to RT it once in awhile. Also, once he pretended he joined fun., and I just remember a list of perks you get when you join fun. that he posted, and one was free Netflix. That was hilarious to me for some reason. I found out they were putting out a new album this fall and of course was really excited for their tour. I was hoping Amee could come with me and we could get decked out in Bendex swag, but turned out she was on some family vacation something or other crap and couldn't come with me. So I was like that sucks but whatever I'm gonna do this anyway. So I made this tshirt:

8-15 is the date their twitter was supposed to go live, but disappeared forever. Anyway I wore the shirt to the show, and got some laughs out of Nick which really was the point. They did an amazing show, Nick yelled at a guy for talking (which was awesome), he sang to me, and everybody danced a lot. OH and I made them friendship bracelets the color of Ski Mask (their new cd)(why I don't really know I was bored and it was fun) and just kinda threw them on Nick's pedal board after the show, and he tweeted me they got them which is pretty awesome! They probably immediately threw them out but still that's pretty cool. Ski Mask is really good, and I can't say enough how awesome that show was, especially after the other one I went to where you couldn't dance and sing and interact like at Doug Fir. They played all of my favorite songs and sounded SO good (I think I'm finally really in love with Doug Fir) and Evan and Geordie were super cute, too.

Islands at Doug Fir
(probably one of the coolest/best concert
pictures I've taken)

They're doing a handful of shows in January, but they're almost all in California. Just come one state up, guys, c'mon! I considered going but even San Francisco is so far away now.

All of their albums have sounded pretty different, but every single song you can tell it's them. They have a certain sound to them even though their albums are all so unique, and ugh Nick's voice is pretty recognizable and amazing. I think the only voice I like better is Kevin Barnes honestly. Also, I remember watching HIMYM and hearing an Islands song on it and freaking out to everybody. And of course The Unicorns reference. HIMYM producers like use some good music, for real.

So there's my personal Islands history. It's nice to kind of get some of this down and remember "Oh yeah, I found out House of Leaves and Return to the Sea are soul mates!" so when I read it again, I'll be sure to go on an Islands kick, too. Here's one of my favorite songs of theirs (I love the old timey feel it has), and a really great video they did - Hallways (which ALSO really has tons of HoL connections in it I feel, I mean just the name of it alone...)