Not Stranded Anymore?
Masks are just fucking creepy, man./ image: Todd Weaver
Article: Destiny Kaus – A & C Writer
Indie-Rock band Islands sets sail for exciting waters
Former Unicorn, Nick Thorburn (also known as Nick Diamonds) is about to embark on a North American tour with his Indie rock band, Islands. Islands, from Montreal, Quebec, will promote their new album Ski Mask, featuring the hit single “Wave Forms.”
Spin Magazine explains how “‘Wave Forms’ opens with [Thorburn] cooing over ominous piano hits.”
This song sets the tone for the 11-track record, which Islands will release on Sep. 17, 2013 under Thorburn’s record label, Manqué. Islands will begin their tour on Sep 18 and wrap it up on Oct 20. They plan on reaching out to an extensive audience anywhere between ages 16 and 69.
“Our tour starts in Visalia, California and ends in Manhattan, New York,” says front man Nick Thorburn.
According to Pitchfork Magazine, Islands hopes that their fifth album Ski Mask will help them gain ground in the music enterprise like never before.
“For Islands, this is us waiting for the breakthrough moment.”
As front man, Nick Thorburn has a reputation for thinking deeply, dreaming, and seizing every opportunity that comes his way. He explains how he drew inspiration for the new album from his muse.
According to the Arts and Culture publication Blackbook Magazine, “Nick Thorburn is something of a restless character, ever striving and adapting to the next moment.”
He retrieves many of his unique ideas through dreams. Blackbook Magazine explains how the song title “Becoming the Gunship,” in Islands’s newest album, came from one of the frontman’s dreams. Listening to his dreams, even in the beginning stages of his musical career, Thorburn claims he found the band’s name.
“It came to me in a sex dream.”
Thorburn says the overall theme of Ski Mask is that “dying is easy.”
The album encapsulates Islands’ journey, bringing to light the dark emotions felt by some of the artists throughout their entire career.
Spin Magazine quotes Thorburn saying “This record is really about being angry. For better or worse, this record kind of sums up my experience thus far with being in a band.”
The rather twisted cover art speaks to this theme. The music website Purevolume describes it as “quirkily creepy.”
Though the band got its start almost a decade ago, they had their struggles entering the music business.
“The band started in 2005,” explains Thorburn, “but we didn’t enter the industry until 2008, after a few years of debating back and forth whether we would be allowed to enter the industry. Finally, it relented and we were allowed to enter the industry.”
Across the span of Islands’s career, Nick Thorburn cannot choose just one favourite recollection yet, he marks the following experience as his funniest concert memory:
“I put a broken bottle up to the face of a bouncer in Fargo, North Dakota and he licked it.”
With this new album, Islands believes they are moving away from their troublesome beginning, through their stranded middle ground, and towards their final destination: the beckoning island where they hope to make an impact on the Indie Rock world.
