Islands - Return To Sea Calum Marsh

Islands Return To Sea Equator Records - 2006 Rating: 6.4 Expectations are a bitch. Islands, formerly The Unicorns (sans a co-vocalist), are going to be running into a lot of trouble as a result of that. 'Corn fans looking for another Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? are going to be disappointed, to be sure - but the fans who are willing to move past that break up and are prepared to embrace goodness in another form altogether...well, they're going to be disappointed, too. Return To The Sea isn't so much a departure from Unicorns territory as it as a misguided attempt to locate that territory and repeat its previous success - consider the albums' sporatic styles: Who Will Cut Our Hair couldn't sit still, changing things up every few seconds and never, ever repeating itself; Return To The Sea shifts genres and styles frequently, too, though each song knows its bounds and sticks to them the whole way through. The result is that each song delves into a (slightly) new area, but those areas aren't allowed enough exploration to be worthwhile exploring in the first place. The sound gets mixed up frequently enough to be unfocused but infrequently enough to be of any real interest - which ends up crippling the album as a whole. But enough of The Unicorns comparissons. This is a new band, why not review from a fresh perspective, right? Fair enough. Return opens with the nine-minute-plus epic 'Swans', a brave way of starting things off that seems to bite off more than it can chew. I'd say it sets the mood well, but the mood of the rest of the album avoids being anything at all like the mood established with 'Swans' - oh well. Next up is the lackluster 'Humans', a track that seems to be building to an exciting climax before descending again and again back into its wishy-washed verses. This is perhaps the most glaring problem with Return: songs continually seem void of interesting ideas, and time after time the tracks build into nothing special or nothing at all; the result is an unforunate absense of charm and wonder. Some tracks work, mind you. The three tracks which make up the bulk of the album's middle, 'Rough Gem', 'Tsuxiit', and 'Where There's A Will, There's A Whalebone', are actually pretty solid. I've heard rumours that 'Rough Gem' was originally a Unicorns song, which would not surprise me in the least, but since it appears on the Islands record I'll give them the credit it earned. These three songs in a row are good enough to warrant giving the album a try, so it's a little disappointing that they have to be bookended by seven songs of much more questionable quality. Yet another disappointment here is the exclusion of Islands' pre-album single 'Abominable Snow', which is much stronger than any track found on the LP itself - ironically, it's inclusion would likely have gone a long way to saving Return To Sea, leaving me to wonder why the band opted to leave it out. There are a couple of nice moments scattered about this album, but at the end of the day, the truth is undeniable: there just aren't enough good songs here to make Return To The Sea worth getting excited about. Do yourself a favour and listen to Who Will Cut Our Hair again instead. Download: Islands - Rough Gem Islands - Abominable Snow Buy: Islands - Return To The Sea