The vocals, the songs, the music, and the production work together to make Singles a one-of-a-kind experience that's nearly perfect.
Singles is leaps and bounds ahead of Future Islands earlier releases, which is no small feat considering the quality of their previous albums. It will undoubtedly make many year end lists, and is their best album to date.
Singles is a taut album with no real lulls in energy or quality.
Singles is an album of big, enriching pop anthems, all of equal rank. It's rare to find an album this coherent and firm in quality.
Singles is a record that is experimental, yet hugely accessible. Future Islands have always tried to challenge their audience. As that audience looks set to grow ever larger, the band have set course for a thrilling pop journey.
Singles is an effortless wonder. Each and every track runs its course avoiding any pitfalls: they not once sound laboured or tryhard, and although this is still very un-standard pop, Future Islands fool you into believing this is the bar from which we gauge the charts.
All that brine is washed away on Singles, an album that throws off the shackles of the past and looks defiantly forward, not back.
Their fourth album is their tightest, most complete effort yet.
Future Islands are remaining relevant by crafting stimulating, quirky, synth-laden music that fuses the arcane with the universal; there’s a depth and complexity to their sound that’s lacking in many of their peers.
There's nothing super-dark about Singles, but Herring has a tragic underdog quality. Beneath catchy pop hooks, there's deep-rooted pain in these love songs.
Singles is an album overwrought with emotion. And like anything that thrusts itself at you in such a sincere way, you may either want to embrace its theatricality, or retreat from it.
In taming their wilder side, Future Islands’ ecstatic melancholy has never sounded quite so free.
Listen to Singles ... and you’re made immediately aware that this is a band who have spent time honing their craft and perfecting their sound, and their fourth album is a glorious collection of soaring, uninhabited synth-pop gems for which Singles is the perfect title.
Herring acts on impulse—at no point does he sound calculated or clever—offering an open invitation to the uninhibited, to the goofy, and the sentimental.
Where previous albums were drowned in a wash of noise, Singles accentuates the band's softer tones and frames its wild bursts of energy with sharper focus. Singles makes Future Islands more accessible without sacrificing integrity.
What they have created is a consistent work which showcases the band’s diversity as well as their skill and passion in making music which treads the ground between weird and wonderful.
Get past the initial jolt of weirdness and you'll find in his delivery a soul-puncturing cry from the very frontlines of life, able to evoke both desperate tragedy and skyscraping joy all at once.
Get over Herring's Shatner-like earnestness like you did with Destroyer's Kenny G moves on Kaputt and you'll unlock the furrowed brows, baggy eyes and bulging veins beneath the metronomic perfection.
More sweeping and grand than any of their previous records, the trio’s fourth LP is by far their most cinematic, and if Singles‘ sound has a counterpart in Movieland it’s the films of Sofia Coppola.
Eight years since forming, four albums deep - there remains no other band sounding remotely like Future Islands.
Singles is an impressively assured record, particularly in terms of its robust, coherent sonic palette, which layers ebbing synth chords and delicate guitar lines over an infectious, driving rhythm section.
As easy as it is to enjoy, there is something fleeting in its pleasures, as if it isn’t quite complete without occupying the same spaces as the band.
Three years after their back-to-back records, time has served Future Islands well, especially given their expansive growth and their ability to forge their strongest qualities to precision.
Future Islands have never owned their sound so fully, even if they continually threaten to come off the rails or devolve into pure treacle at any moment.
There’s a lot of infectious funk on ‘Singles’, and Herring as a vocalist can pull off soulful with palpable ease, but this LP still feels as though it’s one step away from Future Islands’ masterpiece.
Despite whatever changes have occurred, superficial, contextual, or otherwise, Future Islands have retained those things that have benefited them from inception: their sense of urgency, keen ear for drama, and their unrealized potential.
He pours out sad-ballad syrup like he's using it to clog a fresh wound. And sometimes the lyrics are as uncanny as the voice
Herring’s growling vocals prevent proceedings from becoming too gloopy or nostalgic, and make ‘Singles’ a new-wave treasure.
By the end of Singles, not only are these not singles, they aren’t even the strong Future Islands songs from previous records.
Frankly, I struggled with the Future Islands because their music sounded too abstract for a Synth-pop sound. The release of 'Singles' in 2014 had me thinking, 'Once bitten. Twice shy.' So I ignored the album for several years. That all changed when I joined the subscription streaming services, which provides me with a plethora of music to explore. The distinct vocals of Samuel T. Herring are prominent in the mix and make for a delightful listen. Delightful, eh? [Settles back in work chair] ... read more
Singles has very well crafted synth pop tunes with great sounding production. I live the vocals and the melodies are super enjoyable.
Overall consistent, but Seasons (waiting on you) is definitely far better than any others songs as it is one of the greatest songs I've ever heard.
Pasan los años y cada vez considero a Singles como una pieza magistral del synthpop moderno, tomando elementos del New Wave/New Romantic ochentero para hacer piezas modernas como ‘Seasons’ o ‘Like The Moon’ y también crear temas más sobrios pero al mismo tiempo oscuro como ‘Fall From Grace’ con vocales sacados de un álbum metal. El resultado es un interesante álbum que logra ser atemporal.
1 | Seasons (Waiting On You) 3:46 | 93 |
2 | Spirit 4:21 | 84 |
3 | Sun in the Morning 3:48 | 84 |
4 | Doves 3:28 | 83 |
5 | Back in the Tall Grass 4:15 | 80 |
6 | A Song for Our Grandfathers 4:55 | 84 |
7 | Light House 4:47 | 85 |
8 | Like the Moon 4:39 | 80 |
9 | Fall From Grace 4:14 | 78 |
10 | A Dream of You and Me 3:59 | 92 |
#3 | / | Under the Radar |
#4 | / | Time Out New York |
#7 | / | SPIN |
#8 | / | MAGNET |
#8 | / | musicOMH |
#9 | / | Q Magazine |
#10 | / | The Telegraph |
#11 | / | BBC Radio 6 Music |
#11 | / | NME |
#12 | / | Gigwise |