Fang Island // Fang Island

Brooklyn quintet Fang Island has created a 30 minute sonic journey of positivity and inspiration. Imagine winning the lottery…your first kiss…getting the girl…winning the game just at the buzzer…getting a promotion…having all your dreams come true. If your life were made into a movie, Fang Island would be playing very prominently in the background during all of those moments.

It comes out tomorrow and will cure any post-Vday blues. (Check it out!)

Dreams of Dreams
The first track starts off with the popping sound of fireworks. Anticipation. It’s the start of something great. In comes some Nintendo-esque guitar. It starts to get a bit churchy  toward the end with the very inspirational “they are all within my reach, they are free” gang vocals over an organ, but, this doesn’t ruin the mood at all. In fact, when I first heard that Fang Island has three guitarists, I thought it would all be just noise…They’re definitely a guitar based band but they don’t overdo it or leave other instruments out.

Careful Crossers
I love how the song picks up energy right out of the gate and continues the inspirational vibe. This song has a very big sound..in fact it’s one of the largest sounding songs on the album. Maybe something an orchestra of guitarists could do. There is a stunning guitar riff about halfway through the song and the guitar fades between the ears, which I thought was a nice touch. The songs on this album are all just the right length.

Daisy
This is the song that initially hooked me on Fang Island. It’s got a great drum beat and really catchy vocals. “Ooh, that’s alright, hey that’s okay.” The entire song is a great mix of slow and fast, creating a great mix of eclectic beats and hand claps, and no matter how much someone denies it…everyone loves hand claps. Just like with all of the songs on Fang Island, there is tons going on and they manage to reign it all in and make it work together beautifully.

Life Coach
I feel like this song had a lot of potential to be annoying with its repetition and odd sounding guitar, and while it isn’t my favorite song on the album, it’s not annoying. I like how the faster guitar offsets the main guitar, and it sounds like there’s another guitar harmonizing with the fast guitar. I think these are what prevent the song from being annoying.

Sideswiper
Who doesn’t love gang vocals? I definitely can’t understand any of the vocals in this song, but, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what they’re saying because no matter what the words are I’d still feel great singing along. I bet they have to blow on their fingers after this song to put out the fire… frantic in all the right ways. There are bits of slow acoustic sounds subtly mixed in. This song sounds like a big reveal…if it were a movie sound track, where the vocals start would be where everything was in slow motion and started to make sense, and the softer, slower guitar would be the happy resolution before the credits.

The Illinois
Definitely not one of the more memorable songs on the album. More harmonizing guitars, though, make it very enjoyable. This is another song where they must have to blow on their fingers…I can’t even keep a strumming pattern for more than 5 seconds, let alone play like this. Then, everything fades to a stop and there’s nothing but more gang vocals, followed by guitars that make for a nice lead in to “Treeton.”

Treeton
In most of the vocals on Fang Island there are multiple people singing, but one higher pitched voice is prominent. However, during some parts of this song, one lower voice is prominent, allowing for outright harmonies, not gang vocals. Later on in the song, gang vocals are song on a single word, “woah.” The guitar here sounds kind of like birds trilling. “Treeton” has a nice and simple catchy rhythm, and the rhythm develops and gets more complex toward the end as it adds more riffs and separate rhythms.

Davy Crockett
This is definitely one of my favorite songs on the album. It starts of slow but not boring, with a very serene and simple keyboard sound. The entire song is an incredible buildup, and  in comes the anthemic guitar sound, followed by “Ooh ooh woah,” and something about Davy Crockett. It’s another song I can’t understand the lyrics of, but pretend I do so I can sing along anyway. I love the incredibly deep drum/clap sound toward the end. There are more harmonies instead of gang vocals, and I like these the best, especially the higher harmonies.

Welcome Wagon
Probably the “heaviest” song on the album, especially at the beginning, but also one of the most light-hearted sounding songs on the album, with its high-pitched, fun rhythm-ed guitar. I really love the technical element of the guitars in this song.

Dorian
If this were a movie sound track, “Dorian” would be playing during the end credits. It’s very melodic and ends just as the album began: with fireworks.

BOTTOM LINE:
This is an incredibly strong début from a band that will hopefully set the course for 2010. I’m easily predicting that Fang Island will be on my ‘best of 2010’ list, unless of course 2010 is an amazing year for music. Don’t judge a band by their biography is a lesson I learned from Fang Island…sure, this album is primarily instrumental and I love vocals, but this never even enters into the picture when I listen to this album. I think that people can love this album no matter what they’re normally into.