Islands Have Never Sounded Bigger, Bolder, or More Confident Than on ‘Islomania’

“Islomania” is commonly defined as “an obsessional enthusiasm or partiality for islands”. This is a fitting title for at least a couple of reasons when considering the latest release from the Canadian indie band Islands.

First, frontman Nick Thorburn just couldn’t stay away from the band he created and fostered for a decade. Without making a big deal about it, Thorburn decided to put Islands on indefinite hiatus in 2016. A half-decade span is significant, but for many bands, it’s a typical between-album interim. After a few years spent involved in other projects, Thorburn realized the new music he was writing was destined to become another Islands album. And the hiatus wasn’t really even five years, because Islomania was recorded over a two-year period.

Also, and more significantly, Islomania is more enthusiastically Islands than any other Islands album has been. Though it may have come together in a piecemeal fashion, it is such a unified statement it sounds like it happened all at once. Islands have never sounded bigger, bolder, or more confident. It is as if Thorburn had been prevented from making Islands music as a punitive measure, and the embargo finally was lifted.

Islomania distills Thorburn’s knack for mixing thoughtful indie music, sugary synthpop, and arch chamber-pop into a clean, airtight record that goes down extremely easy. Indie stalwarts Chris Coady, Mike Stroud, Patrick Ford, and John Congleton were drafted to produce and mix. Their combined efforts lend Thorburn’s compositions a studio sheen that is impressive and emphatic but also might put off fans of Islands’ more cozy, intimate efforts.

Thorburn’s songwriting classicism has always lent Islands’ music a certain air of timelessness, but Islomania is very much a contemporary-sounding record. And “contemporary-sounding” in 2021 means lots of 1980s references. The vaguely tropical, syncopated digital percussion on the laid-back title track, blazin’ sax on the funky “Natural Law Party”, and chicken-scratch rhythm guitar throughout. All are touchstones of the Me Decade, for better or worse. But they work to the same extent they did on, say, Metronomy’s The English Riviera, an album with which Islomania seems to have some affinity.

If the double-entendre disco-pop of “(We Like To) Do It With the Lights On” is deliberately disposable, the sharp, chugging new wave love song “Carpenter” shows Thorburn and company are after something more than mere ear candy.

The best parts of Islomania, though, find a cushy midpoint between the style and substance. “Never Let You Down” is, musically, a full-on New Order pastiche, from the melancholy chords and whiplash drums to the staccato sequencers and lead bass lick. It works quite well. So does “Set the Fairlight”, whose jaunty rhythm and jagged guitar suggest Thorburn has been keeping up on indie bands with “day” and “wave” in their names.

At certain points, Thorburn tries to add more gravity to the proceedings, but he needn’t have. The two more downbeat songs that close out Islomania sound a bit labored. Earlier, the tense “Closed Captioning” has a swooning melody of the kind Thorburn is so good at, but its social commentary plateaus with “Soak the rich / While they wield their influence / We while away on instruments.” The wordplay definitely is sprier than the sentiment.

In a sense, Islomania is, paradoxically, the most essential Islands album for newcomers and the least essential for longtime fans. At the very least, it offers fun for everyone, going well beyond the comeback album threshold for justifying its own existence.