With As Long As You Are, Future Islands have created an album that looks back as well as forwards, that confronts old ghosts and new hope.
It’s also one that “pushes the edges of what we do” according to William Cashion; ballads are a beat slower and more dramatic, the upbeat tracks have a little more spark and urgency. And, above all, it’s a record full of searing honesty, redemption, and what singer Sam Herring refers to as “letting go”. “As an artist, you always have fears that you’re just gonna get old and then people won’t care,” says Herring, “but this is what we’re supposed to sound like and, to us, it’s the best we’ve ever sounded.”