Islands’ new album A Sleep & A Forgetting continues the band’s penchant for crafting adventuresome and infectious state of the art pop music. But this time band leader Nick Thorburn has infused the songs with a personal introspection that gives the record a new and powerful emotional resonance. “This album is far more personal than any I’ve made before,” Thorburn explains. “I left New York after the end of a relationship and came to Los Angeles. There was a piano where I was staying and that’s where I wrote these songs. This record deals with loss, with memory and forgetting and with dreaming. I started writing it on Valentine’s Day and it’s coming out on Valentine’s Day.” The new album was produced by Thorburn and fellow Islands member Evan Gordon in less than two weeks, the 11 songs recorded live with hardly a single overdub. It’s a stripped down process and beautifully understated sound which only reinforces the confessional content of the lyrics. This comes together to striking effect on songs like the darkly dramatic “Oh Maria,” written in the voice of Buddy Holly’s anguished young widow and her reoccurring crash site dreams. “She would have these dreams about being in the field where his plane went down,”Thorburn says. “She would be trying desperately to get past all the bystanders to see him one last time. It’s such an evocative story it just stuck with me. And it’s absolutely consistent with the album’s themes of heartbreak, death and dreaming. “Far from being self-pitying, A Sleep & A Forgetting powerfully transforms personal unrest into affecting and soulful pop music.

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Track Listing

In A Dream it Seemed Real
This is Not A Song
Never Go Solo
No Crying
Hallways
Can't Feel My Face
Lonely Love
Oh Maria
Cold Again
Don't I Love You
Same Thing