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Written by Pete Timmermann Tuesday, 25 April 2006 05:12

Where the Unicorns would screw with unexpected instruments, Islands screw with unexpected musical genres.

One of the biggest word-of-mouth hits with indie kids in that past five or so years, the Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? had the perfect combination of indieness to be embraced by hipsters: it came out of left field from a no-name Canadian band, was on a small label, was exceptionally quirky and, you know, it was really good. Not long after a quick tour around the country, the Unicorns released the under-acclaimed single 2014 and then announced their breakup. Its relative quality as “good” or “bad” was lost on me, mostly because I was so enamored to listen to new music with Nick Diamonds’ goofy, childlike singing voice and screwy lyrics.

After an aborted and possibly always-less-than serious attempt at forming a rap group called Th’ Corn Gangg, Diamonds has formed a new band (with former Unicorn J’aime Tambeur) called Islands, and their first album, Return to the Sea, has the perfect combination of the sophomore slump and ex-Unicorns fans looking to bitch that the widely reviled Diamonds lost it when he left the band. Except that, well, if given a chance, it is actually almost as good as Cut Our Hair (unless that’s just me enamored to be listening to Diamonds sing again). Granted, it throws you at first in that it sounds like the Unicorns have been stripped of all of their playfulness and love of weird-sounding instruments and made a straightforward rock album, which would presumably be a bad thing. Strange and unfortunate as it might sound, it actually works.

The best song on the album is the first one, “Swans (Life After Death),” an almost 10-minute-long train of momentum and franticness whose lyrics defy its uncomfortable tone (“Swans swans swans/Sing songs/All night long/Who knew how warm the islands would be?”). Also, the album’s closer (not counting a hidden track), “Ones,” makes good on the promise of a darker, more depressing Unicorns sound. But really, the song that seems to be the most telling of Diamonds and Tambeur’s switch to Islands is “Where There’s a Will There’s a Whalebone,” wherein the otherwise normal-enough sounding song is interrupted about halfway through by Subtitle rapping extensively about the whale’s skeleton. It seems that this is the most easily pinpointable difference between the Unicorns’ sound and Islands’ sound: Where the Unicorns would screw with unexpected instruments, Islands screw with unexpected musical genres. Which genres the influences come from aren’t always immediately apparent, but that’s good, as it really just means that Diamonds is getting better at not letting the seams show in his playfulness.

Purchase downloads for this artist at our BurnLounge.