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(4AD)The synthpop quartet’s heart-on-sleeve frontman, Samuel T Herring, is by turns lovelorn and lovestruck on their affecting seventh LPThe last time the world heard from Future Islands was in 2020. As Long As You Are was an album that suggested things had rectified themselves after a turbulent period in the band’s history. In 2014, 11 years into their career, they had been catapulted from a well-reviewed but small scale cult concern – “a journeyman band”, as frontman Samuel T Herring put it – to viral superstardom virtually overnight thanks to their first television appearance, performing Seasons (Waiting on You) live on The Late Show With David Letterman. Suddenly they could sell out multiple nights at the Brixton Academy and lure Debbie Harry into the studio to record a duet, and could only play the venues they had once called home under a pseudonym. Perhaps inevitably, it brought problems. They more-or-less disowned their 2017 album The Far Field, a “condescending” attempt at “playing the game” that bassist William Cashion called “fucking embarrassing”. But As Long As You Are was an album that sounded contented: there were a lot of songs about the redemptive power of love and the joys of frontman Samuel T Herring’s burgeoning relationship. One was named Glada, which is what red kites are called in Sweden, where Herring was spending most of his time with his partner, Julia Ragnarsson, star of the amazingly titled Swedish drama series Fartblinda (Blinded).There are songs not unlike that on the follow-up: People Who Aren’t There Anymore opens with King of Sweden, which depicts Herring so lovestruck he’s reverted to punk-obsessed adolescence (“feeling like I’m 15, wandering with the Misfits”); “I belong to you, I belong to you,” he sings on Deep in the Night. But this time around those songs feel marooned, scattered through an album that’s primarily concerned with describing the collapse of his relationship: King of Sweden’s chorus of “you are all I need / Nothing said could change a thing” feels coloured by what follows, the deployment of Herring’s trademark vocal growl suddenly seeming pained rather than cathartic in context. Continue reading...