New "Seasons": Future Islands Make Landfall in Miami for the First Time in a Decade

Future Islands is one of those wonderful bands that are impossible to pigeonhole. Wikipedia calls it synth pop, and maybe a 21st-century version of that 1980s scene works as a descriptor. You can hear a little of Morrissey in singer Samuel T. Herring's emotive voice, and there are echoes of New Order in arrangements that are at turns danceable and contemplative.

Percussionist Mike Lowry tells New Times that the Baltimore-based band he'd later join first started out in North Carolina, it was as "a kind of fun, performance art-type group called Art Lord & the Self-Portraits. They initially formed to play a party, and it went well. Art Lord & the Self-Portraits were not destined to last, sadly, as one of the band members eventually moved away, but a tour had been booked by (guitarist) William Cashion and they'd committed to doing the shows, so out of that Future Islands was born."

By the time they officially became Future Islands in 2006, the group demonstrated a serious work ethic. They were road warriors, touring nonstop while still finding plenty of time for the recording studio. It wasn't until their fourth album, 2014's Singles, that they really broke out.

Mainstream success arrived thanks in part to a viral Late Show With David Letterman performance of "Seasons (Waiting on You)" wherein Herring was so into the song it seemed he might jump through the screen into your living room. Soon thereafter, Lowry became a full-time member, and the four-piece lineup has endured ever since.
Lowry describes Future Islands' seventh and newest album, 2024's People Who Aren't There Anymore, as the band's COVID record. "As Long As You Are was pretty much finished and in the mixing process when the whole pandemic shut the world down, so we just started to continue on writing and recording. It was quite a challenge, because we weren't able to be in the same room together for quite a while, so we were sharing ideas over email and working on them that way. Like most of the rest of the world, we were still in shock, trying to process this massive trauma that happened to all of us, and it all sort of came out of that."

The opener, "King of Sweden," is emblematic of that socially distant creative process. "Generally, we set up in the studio and jam around a little bit to catch anything that could become something later on tape before we start working on things that are maybe a little more fleshed-out," Lowry says. "So, we were set up at Wrightway in Baltimore and Gerrit Welmers got this really wild arpeggiated loop going. And, in like five minutes, William and I were jamming on it and it was pretty much fully formed then!

"What made it even weirder was that Sam was in Sweden, and he was joining us in the studio via an app called Audiomovers. And for whatever reason — maybe because it was a Sunday morning on our end — there was no lag or latency, and he was able to sing in real time along with us, and he came up with what would become the chorus right there on the spot. I think we had the whole tune 90 percent finished in like 20 minutes."

Local fans will be able to hear "King of Sweden" and many other favorite Future Islands songs when the quartet plays at ZeyZey in Little River on May 21. It'll be the group's first South Florida show since an Art Basel gig way back in 2014.

While Lowry was hesitant to share what audiences can expect at the Miami show, he was game to share the band's preshow ritual: "We have a sort of 'power up' before we go on, where we grab everyone in our vicinity, put our fists in, and yell 'winners!' on three. Silly, but works every time!"

Future Islands. 8 p.m., Wednesday, May 21, at ZeyZey, 353 NE 61st St., Miami; zeyzeymiami.com. Tickets cost $35 to $95 via shotgun.live.