If you know anything about my musical tastes at all, you know that I’m a fan of the Unicorns. God but I loved that band. This was a group whose first press photo was of their brutal murder, who wrote pop songs about ghosts and dying and getting famous and then some more ghosts, and who couldn’t be bothered with verses and choruses because there was just too much great stuff to cram into each song. The first time I saw them they wore matching pink tuxedos and swung from the rafters.
The second time I saw them was months later, and they were much worse. The band played no encore and clearly had little interest in entertaining the crowd. Having the Arcade Fire open the show didn’t help the band make a lasting impression, either. Not long after that the Unicorns broke up, leaving behind not much besides an album’s worth of amazing songs.
There was hope, though: two thirds of the band, including (necessarily) one founding member split off to form a new group called Islands. Nick Diamonds (née Thorburn) and J’aime Tambeur seemed less crazy than Alden Penner, and perhaps just as talented. Two tracks leaked under the band’s name, and (although I later learned they were written while the Unicorns were still together) I found them immensely encouraging — particularly this one:
Nick Diamonds also put together this. And you know how I feel about that.
Eventually Islands released their debut album, and I kind of thought it stunk. Well, that’s too harsh: it had a couple of good tracks, but it was mostly a disappointment. The songs just weren’t that great. Hopefully it at least convinced some other Canadian bands to reconsider their planned cetacean-themed guest raps.
Now Islands’ second album, Arm’s Way, has leaked, and I’m glad to say it’s much better. The songs are solid. But it’s still kind of a letdown. Here, listen to the version of “Abominable Snow” that’s included on it:
I think it’s fair to say that I am less likely to call a song overdone than most people. Have some strings available? Sure, lay em down! Horns? The more the merrier! And say, have you got enough people for the hand claps yet?
But this… this is bad. It’s too long; it’s got too much stuff; it has too little fun. And I’m afraid that the rest of the album is like it. The underlying songs are good, if generally a minute longer than they need to be. But the production is boring and the instrumentation frequently so uninspired as to be indistinguishable from a karaoke CD. The only person who consistently sounds like he’s trying is Diamonds. And he only sounds like he’s trying to sound like he’s trying.
This isn’t true of every song: the title track fares pretty well, and the band actually manages to let (slightly) loose during a too-cute Who reference on “In The Rushes” and during the sprawling “Vertigo”. But it’s true on far too many of the songs.
In other words, it’s exactly what I should have expected after reading Nick Diamonds say this:
I think in terms of the band, it’s very solidified. I’m trying to think of the focus of the arrangements. It’s way less off the cuff. The first record, we would invite people in, say “yeah, what do you think?”, and give them free reign. This is reigned in.
I understand that the man is sick of having his new band compared to the Unicorns. That band was great, but it’s over. But I do wish wish he’d move on to having another band, rather than just a bunch of musicians who play his songs. This album sounds like a very complicated demo tape.
But hey: it’s much better than Return to Sea. It’s even pretty good! It’s just that given the pedigree involved, I was hoping for something extraordinary.