THE FAR FIELD | FUTURE ISLANDS

6.7.17 Greg Cochrane @ NME: For ‘The Far Field’, Future Islands’ fifth album, the Baltimore trio find themselves in an unfamiliar position. For the first time in their 11-year career, they are making new music knowing a lot of people would hear it.

That hasn’t been the case before. Until their TV performance on the Late Show With David Letterman just over three years ago, they were an underground concern – a band who’d sweated through 800 shows and collected a small but loyal legion of followers. They even made their 2014 breakthrough album ‘Singles’ without a label to release it. Letterman was their shop-window moment. Overnight, when their performance of ‘Seasons (Waiting On You)’ went viral, a wider world was introduced to frontman Samuel T Herring’s intense stage persona. In case you’re wondering, he does slap his own face and thump his chest like that every night. . .