This is the first release from this Boston duo, and it's definitely a promising start! Although only a guitar/drum two-piece in a live setting, this record has a full sound with layers of acoustic and electric guitars and rather melodic bass lines (which makes me wonder how these songs could possibly be pulled off in a live setting). The album's first song, "Native Light", is a sleepier ballad that sets the wrong tone for the record (and might've been well suited for a closer), while the rest of the songs are jangly delights, with a strong resemblance to early R.E.M. (noticeable even in the vocal style sometimes), the Bats or the Hang Ups, as well as their peers, Pants Yell!. They're all fairly calm and easy-going throughout, although they let things rise above a simmer once or twice in their codas. If you're a sucker for 80s jangle-pop, like I am, then this record is just for you!
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On their 8-song album In the Black Carpet, the duo The Shrinking Islands plays earnest pop/rock streamlined down to the basics: a guitar, some drums, and a singer painting portraits and telling stories. These songs vividly do both, while also capably conveying a tone of consideration, reflection. They play briskly, brightly at times; slowly and ruminatively in others. Both styles are fetching in their hands. Certain lyrics stand out for how evocative they are, the way they bring out feelings and/or images in a direct yet indirect (un-obvious) way. My brain keeps catching on the "When the street lights line the clouds" image of "The Secret Activities Begin," and a later song's chorus "We're getting swallowed in grace." There's a light-as-air feeling about In the Black Carpet, nice like that. But it's substantial music too, music that lingers.
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So what does The Shrinking Islands sound like? To borrow a line from "State Fair": "green miles on parade," or feathery guitar arpeggios, rolling, melodic basslines, thwacking beats, yearning, vulnerable vocals, slippery lyrics that seem to evaporate in the sun. The first two verses of "State Fair" are diffident, close-to-the-chest feints before the band punches out the walls, opening the song in an expansive, extended instrumental of blue skies, brown, snaking roads and hills that march to infinity. "Swallowed In Grace" is a more conventional verse-chorus-verse pop composition, with a first-rate earworm of a melody. Once heard, you can't shake it.
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