02-01-19
Future Islands is one of those artists that to see them live, is to hear something very different than their recorded material. I had always been a fan of Future Islands, upon hearing there music I was pulled in by the sounds of lead-singer Sam Herring’s voice; the rough texture to his tone creates a gothic-like narration, building a dynamic environment.
Much of Future Islands songs are snapshots of moments, trying to reconcile the difficulties of everyday life and the struggles with trying to fulfill your pursuit of success. Whether it’s trying to understand the balance in mundania while in pursuit of your dreams, or dealing with the fallout of an endless chase, as is the case in Long Flight. As Sam Herring stated at Glastonbury Music Festival in 2015, “See, when you are out on the road you start to lose things. It starts off really small like your favorite t-shirt, your favorite cap, and then you come home, and you got no place to stay.”
This song is more autobiographical than not. Sam has used this experience, to create many pieces of music. However, time gave him the ability to analyze the events with greater depth. In the following album, he begins to realize that though this situation has caused him pain, he wasn’t an innocent bystander and that in fact, his gamble on his own life and career had been the main culprit in causing the rift. Follow up yet again nearly six years later on their most recent album, and on Far Field’s, Beauty of the Road, he explores the power of this situation, and how the subsequent events cost him not only a lover but a dear friend.
Remorse is one of those emotions that we can hardly ever see coming, it creeps on us after the proverbial dust begins to settle. Quick actions and lack of consideration are significant culprits in crafting situations that will ultimately lead to remorse. The emotional pain that remorse carries doesn’t seem to change whether you have caused the actions, or the actions have been enacted against you, often resulting in deep scarring.
Fortunately, like every other emotion, it isn’t permanent…nothing is. The trick is to learn how to roll into the pain, how to mold into something useful. None of us will make it through life without scars—real scars, emotional scars, spiritual scars, any type of scar—they help shape us, our outlooks and dispositions. We choose how to intake all of it and reflect the best of what we can.
Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
This is what I know
The canopy loss of our home
Is a far cry, while I’m away
Tethered to finding a rope
We walk in precarious ways
And go alone at night
To Misery’s bed
In Misery’s bed, we stay
So far away
So far away
So far away
[Verse 2]
Here in the tremble and pulse
With the rush and the weight of the world
I am a cannibal, known
Begging the lashes to break
You find me awake in a dream
A scream in the dark, so it seems
Or is that just how it leaves?
The shadow I cast now the breeze
So far away
So far away
So far away
So far away
[Verse 3]
So this is how it goes
With the loss of our canopy home
That falls with the leaves from the trees
As we pass
And I wasn’t there in the last
But I was surely there from the first
Here, in my chest where you burst
I keep the crush
And the weight of the world
So far away
So far away
So far away
So far away
So far away
So far away
So far away
So far away