Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Jun 12, 2014The Baltimore-based band’s fourth album is layered with songs that are faultlessly executed from top to bottom. Although the lyrics are somewhat simplistic, their direct marriage is welcomed.
-
Mar 24, 2014The vocals, the songs, the music, and the production work together to make Singles a one-of-a-kind experience that's nearly perfect.
-
Mar 21, 2014It's rare to find an album this coherent and firm in quality. But best of all, a good half of the record will give you plenty of inspiration to channel Herring's sweet dance moves.
-
Mar 21, 2014Singles is an effortless wonder. Each and every track runs its course avoiding any pitfalls.
-
Mar 20, 2014Singles is a record that is experimental, yet hugely accessible.
-
Mar 18, 2014Future Islands have crafted the best ten of their career.
-
MagnetApr 18, 2014Not every song justifies Herring's bold imprimatur, but enough do to make them stand out in a catalog that wasn't wanting for impact tracks. [No. 108, p.55]
-
Entertainment WeeklyMar 28, 2014Their fourth album is their tightest, most complete effort yet. [4 Apr 2014, p.64]
-
Mar 25, 2014ingles is sometimes stark, and sometimes surprising – but its key constant is that it’s rarely short of spellbinding.
-
May 8, 2014More sweeping and grand than any of their previous records, the trio’s fourth LP is by far their most cinematic.
-
Q MagazineApr 23, 2014The overwrought Fall From Grace is the only bum note: otherwise Singles is a brilliant, bewitching album. [May 2014, p.110]
-
Mar 25, 2014People have finally started to give this band its due attention, and with Future Islands’s virtually unmatched ability to make such a wide variety of lived experience sound unwaveringly electrifying, it’s no wonder why.
-
Mar 25, 2014Singles [is] the first of their albums that really forces the repeat button; as good as In Evening Air and On The Water are, they're so emotionally draining that you don't exactly find yourself in a hurry to play them again right away.
-
Mar 25, 2014Singles is risky, but the strength of the songwriting carries it over.
-
Mar 25, 2014Get over Herring's Shatner-like earnestness like you did with Destroyer's Kenny G moves on Kaputt and you'll unlock the furrowed brows, baggy eyes and bulging veins beneath the metronomic perfection.
-
Mar 24, 2014Get past the initial jolt of weirdness and you'll find in his delivery a soul-puncturing cry from the very frontlines of life, able to evoke both desperate tragedy and skyscraping joy all at once.
-
Mar 24, 2014On Singles, their first for 4AD, the band perfect the persuasive and pervasive nature of pop.
-
MojoMar 21, 2014In taming their wilder side, Future Islands' ecstatic melancholy has never sounded quite so free. [Apr 2014, p.96]
-
Mar 21, 2014The album never quite catches fire like their live performance but it gets close.
-
Mar 20, 2014Beneath catchy pop hooks, there’s deep-rooted pain in these love songs.
-
UncutMar 18, 2014Bassist William Cashion and keyboardist Gerrit Welmers match him for breathless passion, whipping up a stirring synth-pop writ in bold emotional colours. [Apr 2014, p.74]
-
Under The RadarMar 18, 2014Singles makes Future Islands more accessible without sacrificing integrity. [Feb/Mar 2014, p.71]
-
Mar 18, 2014What they have created is a consistent work which showcases the band’s diversity as well as their skill and passion in making music which treads the ground between weird and wonderful.
-
Mar 18, 2014These deranged components act as one, swinging into motion in one fatal blow. That it comes out sounding seamless is another thing altogether.
-
Mar 25, 2014As easy as it is to enjoy, there is something fleeting in its pleasures, as if it isn’t quite complete without occupying the same spaces as the band.
-
Mar 24, 2014No album will ever supplant their trademark live show, but at the very least, the confidence they’re putting to tape sure makes Singles‘ audacious title acceptable.
-
Mar 25, 2014Sometimes the lyrics are as uncanny as the voice.
-
Mar 25, 2014Though rock has always been the ideal genre for artists to explore entropy, Herring and his bandmates have somehow found a way to inject what is arguably the safest kind of music, adult pop, with their own weird brand of controlled chaos.
-
Mar 25, 2014The synth-pop skeletons here are alluring: Singles succeeds in accessing the unconscious pleasures associated with the cold percussion and computer melodies of the early-mid-1980s.
-
Mar 24, 2014Singles leaves the listener in much the same state as their other records: loving what exists, warts and all, yet still gazing expectantly toward what remains to be seen.
-
Apr 8, 2014There are good songs here to be sure, but a measure of skepticism shouldn’t just arise from the band’s original fan base.
-
Mar 24, 2014Herring’s growling vocals prevent proceedings from becoming too gloopy or nostalgic, and make Singles a new-wave treasure.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 82 out of 86
-
Mixed: 4 out of 86
-
Negative: 0 out of 86
-
Apr 9, 2014
-
Mar 26, 2014
-
Mar 26, 2014