via//chicago

np: "Switched On" - Islands

The journey of Nick Thorburn (a.k.a. Nick Diamonds) has been an interesting one for those paying attention. He first leaped to attention when his band at the time, The Unicorns, started gathering rave reviews for their 2003 album, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone. The album presented a slightly skewed, fantastically fresh take on indie pop and it seemed like the band was destined for bigger and better things. Sadly these things weren't to come under the Unicorns moniker, as they split up in 2005. Thorburn and Unicorns drummer Jamie Thompson threw themselves into the hip-hop infused Th' Corn Gangg, recording a few songs and doing a few remixes, but the project never really amounted to anything substantial, at least as far as released materials go. As it turns out, around the same time Thorburn and Thompson were recording an album for an entirely new project, known as Islands. Their debut full-length, Return to the Sea, came out in 2006 and was greeted with positive reviews all around. Personally I enjoyed the album, but I found it lacking some of the spark that drew me to The Unicorns initially. It seemed like a promising continuation, but some fans started to worry what would happen after Thompson parted ways with the band. As far as I was concerned, his departure didn't trouble me much because the follow up, Arm's Way, was bigger and better in just about every way. It expanded on the band's sounds and shot off into varied, proggier dimensions without sacrificing the pop basics. I loved it. So this year Islands regains Jamie Thompson and releases their third album, Vapours. Thorburn's interviews spoke of his desire to scale back from the excess of Arm's Way and spin things off in another direction. He was certainly right about that and I'm still not entirely certain it was in a good direction. As varied and organic as Arm's Way was, Vapours is concise and electronic - full of keyboards, drum machines, synths, etc. There are some fantastic pop tunes but it certainly hasn't grabbed as a whole. "Switched On" is the song that jumped out at me on first listen, but mostly because I kept waiting for Young Jeezy to pop for "put on for my city".

(As a quick sidenote, the third original member of The Unicorns, Alden Penner, has recently released a fantastic album by his band Clues that is worth hearing.)