Album Review: Taste by Islands

Will Nick Thorburn ever shake off the shadow of The Unicorns? Despite his adventurous and successful career in the 13 years since Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? was released, the ceaseless clamor for an extension of the band's 2014 mini-reunion continues to exist as an enormous, unrelenting ….

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Nick Thorburn’s music has been downloaded more than 80 million times in the past two years, but a majority of those people will likely always associate his work with a girl who can’t pronounce the phrase “MailChimp.” In a perfect world, the two albums his band Islands have simultaneously released would change that. Taste and Should I Remain Here at Sea? are Islands’ first releases since 2013. In the intervening years, Thorburn busied himself by composing for the podcast, Serial, including the tinny minor-chord piano theme that starts each episode.

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As someone who was exposed to his work post-Unicorns, I’ve always appreciated Nick Thorburn as an earnest and un-precious artist. His participation in soundtracking the podcast Serial last year cemented his position as a man of the people, and this latest pair of albums should bear along that seal. Both releases, Taste and Should I Remain Here at Sea, are both refreshingly transparent documents.

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Released in conjunction with the relatively subdued Should I Remain Here at Sea?, Islands' sixth studio album, Taste, is a bright, sparkling addition to their catalog. While the band insisted that these two LPs were not a double album, it's hard to digest one without considering the other: Taste is the beating heart to the soul of Should I Remain Here at Sea? Imbued with catchy synth arpeggios, slinky rhythms, and the band's most polished production to date, Taste is the cool party before Should I Remain's come-down ruminations. Less unhinged than 2008's Arm's Way and more streamlined than 2009's Vapours, Taste manages to be both magically buoyant and hypnotically focused, whether lead Islander Nick Thorburn is riding along undulating flows or switching gears into reflective mode ("Outspoken Dirt Biker" and "Cool Intentions").

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Taste is one of two new Islands records being released on the same day. Make no mistake, though: they do not comprise a double album, but rather two wholly unique records making simultaneous debuts. Taste, officially the sixth Islands LP, showcases their synthy/electronic leanings, and is at times reminiscent of both Islands' 2009 effort Vapours and Islands front man Nick Diamonds' (a.k.a.

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The risk of releasing two albums simultaneously, though declared from the get-go as separate entities, is massive. Many times the result feels bloated, an indulgent result of the artist’s unwillingness to edit, while other times one title overshadows the other in potency. None of these pitfalls have stopped Nick Thorburn, who as the main force behind Islands has created two albums that work on their own but together mend the fractured halves of a broken heart.

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So maybe Nick Thorburn just writes a lot of music. Sure, I’ll bite. In five years he’s penned two seasons of soundtracks for NPR show Serial, put out two albums for his band Islands, joined the supergroup Mister Heavenly, and dropped two solo albums under his moniker Nick Diamonds. But quantity doesn’t always point to quality.

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Nick Diamonds' Islands have maintained a healthy balance of hooks and smarts over four albums. 2006's Return to the Sea, secretly the finest album of that year, was a triumphant tale rampant with real-life experience and creative worlds of human interaction. The list of contributors to that record is astounding to this day. Ten years on, many of the orchestral elements of Islands' past are now gone.

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