I've been following ISLAND since I found them accidentally while perusing past Flying Vinyl releases on Discogs (they've done it twice), and decided to give them a listen. Their deceptively slow songs with very clean, arpeggiating and cascading guitars backed by casual drums and the raw voice of Rollo Doherty were infectious, and obviously many others feel the same and it was impossible to find one of their previous records at a good price. The album cycles between many types of slick guitar playing, with scales chords and everything in between, an efficient interplay between guitars and tempos, and multiple filters on the guitars. Rollo Doherty doesn't disappoint, his soulful vocals filling the songs with emotion. The bass and drums don't try to do anything fancy, but they effectively drive and hold together the songs. Try is a bit weird for its synth basis, but it does work and fits with the aesthetic of the album. The guitar work is pretty impressive and the mixing gives the band an appealing but hard to place texture, as if they're playing constantly in a slightly grimier version of the small warehouse from the video for In My Place by Coldplay. They do seem very similar to Coldplay of that A Rush of Blood era, a little less smooth but more experimental and technically impressive. It's amazing how many different tones and crescendos they can reach with just two guitars, a bass drums and a vocalist, and minimal production flourishes, even changing between these in the course of a single song. They do borrow the riffs of contemporaries like the Sherlocks, albeit at a much more relaxed and laid back rate. I think that this band will continue to experiment and improve, and will definitely get more popular, either without or with a small hit later along the line. Hopefully they'll continue to release new music, and the meantime I may buy their vinyl- I'll definitely keep listening to them.
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