Future Islands

"B'More: Never Been Scurd - reasons to believe you won't get shot"

John Waters - a mustache such as his doesn't survive in a true 'hood
Baltimore Aquarium - the city would never spend money on those massive tanks if it thought drive-by's were a real threat
Merriweather Post Pavillion - that thing would be a crack den in two days if it was a valid possibility
Janet Diggs - my pupsy whitebread mother managed to grow-up on Sherwood Ave. without skills in knifefighting.
Samuel Herring, William Cashion, Gerritt Welmers - would not be complete fools and move up from Greenville, NC unless they thought they'd make it to 2011 without undergoing a gang initiation, and be able to make sicknasty No Wave music in this underrated city.

Truth is, the scene always has to start somewhere. Places like Brooklyn and Portland weren't always that cool, ok? I wasn't alive back then, but I've heard that was the deal from some trusted sources. Animal Collective, Beach House and Dan Deacon call it home; the latter of which pleaded a good case with the boys of Future Islands, who knew him from days at ECU playing in the performance art band Art Lord & the Self-Portraits.

FI's May release In Evening Air might be one of my favorite albums of this balmy season. Chariot-driven rhythms, dreamscape sounds and focus on musical textures over melodies. And it's a breakup album - I don't care how hysterically in love you are, because we all find luxurious despondence in expressions of ragged heartbreak. Frontman Herring's lyrics of a relationship's decomposition will have any one of us staring into an emptied bottle.
And any time you look like a former linebacker with the stage theatrics of Jarvis Cocker, you're pretty damn solid in my book. I simultaneously want to be fireman-carried by him and participate in a modern dance troupe with him. Weird?

Future Islands // Tin Man
Future Islands f. Katrina Ford // In the Fall