Fang Island’s perspective was unabashedly optimistic—their 2010 debut full-length opened and closed with crackling fireworks, two years earlier than fellow “hell yeah” rockers Japandroids did the identical on Celebration Rock. However these songs are much less fascinated with recounting a play-by-play of an excellent evening out than capturing the sound of that heat and infinite feeling. When these songs do embody lyrics, the verses ring out like long-lost people requirements: “They’re all inside my attain/They’re free,” they sing, plainly however with conviction, on “Goals of Goals.” “Daisy” conjures Tommy through only a few precise phrases, each verse dissolving into a gaggle chant of vowel sounds.
The magic of Fang Island was this skill to evoke pleasure within the type of guitar solos and drum fills, their wordlessness leaving room for particular person exuberance. Maybe that’s why their second and ultimate album, 2012’s Main, appears like a retreat from the band’s mission. Combining lopsided rhythms and spring-loaded melodies with piano and extra narrative lyricism, Main places phrases to the feelings Fang Island’s songs had beforehand solely steered. There’s a completeness to those songs, but in addition a pure limitation: It’s tougher to share in a collective launch when confronted with extra concrete pictures, like “Your legs lie so stuffed with grace they’re scary.” Nonetheless, of those three reissues, Main sounds the sharpest, the remaster wringing much more out of the guitars on “Chompers” and the synths on “Asunder.”
Bolstered by an indie rock boosterism that feels deliriously removed from the music business right now (I initially discovered them when the deep-fried synth freakout “Life Coach” landed on a playlist created for City Outfitters), Fang Island mirrored the passion of their environment. It’s becoming then, that this reissue contains the ultimate music the band recorded, “Starquake,” carried out reside numerous occasions however beforehand solely launched through a limited-edition flexi disc. Written in 2006 however tracked in 2014, the music is an eerily contained abstract of the band’s historical past: A piano offers strategy to competing guitars that spiral upwards like a Weapons N’ Roses cowl band enjoying in heaven. The band cycles by way of rhythms like they’re enjoying the overture to a musical about Fang Island, a dizzying onslaught that compresses a decade-long profession into 5 giddy minutes.
The model of “Starquake” featured on this reissue was recorded at Silent Barn, one of many many now-defunct venues in New York that elevated teams of school pals to nationwide standing. As web archives fade and digital information degrade, it’s simpler than ever to lose sight of a second within the current previous when bands might be propelled from lounge reveals to opening for the Flaming Lips by a couple of optimistic opinions on-line. Santos Social gathering Home is now an axe-throwing bar, and City Outfitters is presently operating a sale on vinyl copies of 1989. However on these reissues, Fang Island nonetheless sound like an infinite celebration, a ultimate spherical of high-fives for everybody earlier than the lights come on.
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