Not Running on Fumes

Vapours is the third album by
Islands, and maybe the seventh by prolific and protean bandleader Nick
Thorburn (credited here as Nick “Diamonds” Thorburn-Swann), whose other
projects thus far include the Unicorns, th’ Corn Gangg, Reefer, and
Human Highway. Islands’ debut, Return to the Sea, was
something of an artistic rebirth for Thorburn after the almost
theatrical demise of the Unicorns, and this was reflected in its
lyrical themes of life after death, its darkly comic tales of dystopian
survivalism, and its glimpses of tropical/heavenly paradises (the
tropics were also evoked in the album’s odd calypso moods). Middling
sophomore album Arm’s Way found Islands swollen from open-door
bedroom recording project to six-­member band, complete with dual
violinists, and Thorburn’s songs grew increasingly baroque and
meandering to match.

Vapours doesn’t quite return to The Sea‘s
once-in-an-afterlife wellspring, but it does smartly scale back the
extravagances of Arm’s Way. (Of its relatively stripped-down
sound, Thorburn told Pitchfork, “I needed to withdraw from overblown
metaphors and filling every possible sonic space.”) The pizzicato
strings are still here, but they play second (and third) fiddle to the
album’s alternately chintzy and cool gliding synths. The album has a
sense of steady propulsion that the earnestly exuberant Return to
the Sea didn’t need, but from which Arm’s Way, with its
relatively sprawling rock classicism, perhaps could have benefited.

That propulsion properly kicks off with “No You Don’t,” which finds
Thorburn cod-rapping, “Don’t buy dope from the man you don’t know” over
a zombie-marching drum-machine beat and eerie, burbling fun-house
organs, and reaches some sweet, strange pop heights with the gentle
groove of the title track, the playful riffing of “Disarming the Car
Bomb,” and the cooing half-time chorus of “Tender Torture.”

It’s not all one straightforward streak, and there are some
expectedly unexpected turns. “On Foreigner” begins with an icy, angelic
chorus that sounds lifted from the final, snow-falling scene of Tim
Burton’s Edward Scissorhands. On the millionth song ever named
“Heartbeat,” Thorburn dons some dubious Auto-Tuning (is it possible the
rap impresario of th’ Corn Gangg would defy Jay-Z’s “Death of
Auto-Tune” pronouncement?) and sings, “I might be wrong/But I don’t
think you could sing along… Cued up the major third/But you don’t
know, you just take my word.”

If it sounds like a snide, music-geek dig, it’s a well-earned
one—even in his weakest work, Thorburn displays a facile ability
to twist textbook-level songcraft to whatever weird whims strike him,
and Vapours is a much stronger showing than the band’s last
time out.