Indisputably, Islands are one of the heavyweights of this year's CMJ. They played the cavernous Highline Ballroom last night to a packed 18+ crowd and filled the place with crazy, dancing, sock-hopping teenagers. It seemed like an ideal cap on a successful return for the band after a year of inactivity. And yet yesterday, they played a free show in the afternoon in a place that looks like a strip club. Thanks Brooklyn Vegan!
And though the tiny stage with its stripper-poles and red cushioned walls could barely fit the six members and guest, and though they took forever to set up, and though you could hardly breathe in the back of R-Bar, let alone get an overpriced drink, and even though headliner Yo Majesty canceled at the last moment, Islands were even more crazily fun here than they were the night before.
There's this huge, unwieldy and organic quality to the band. There's no reliance on programming or sequencers or samples and apart from the electric keyboard, they could play unplugged without cheating.
“There's a will, there's a whalebone” brought out iconic rapper Subtitle, delivering lightning-fast rhymes and rhythms and walking into the packed crowd. By the end, singer Nick Thorburn followed suit, literally falling, only caught by the big guy in front, flinging himself around like a rag doll, stealing a guy in the front row's hat, putting it on. Keeps singing, throws it back. Falls into the crowd again, and this time runs through it like a ferret. When he mounts the stage again he's carrying someone's umbrella.
The umbrella opens, bad luck or no, and he's spinning it around like this was a cabaret show. Simultaneously on acid and Froot Loops, smacking the disco ball overhead as if it were a piñata. It was like a carnival. A carnival with better music.
They end with the exuberant, sweeping “Swans (Life After Death)”. The keyboardist picks up his keyboard (he'd had it on his lap, nowhere else to put it) and waves it in the air like a flag. The violinist humps the stripper pole for support/recreation.
Then everyone simultaneously climaxes, falls in a heap, and shuffles off to the bathroom.
Words by David deLeon
Photos by Nate Dorr and Sam Horine
