Fang Island, Fang Island (The Albums of 2010)

Fang Island, Fang Island (The Albums of 2010)
by Chris Polley

I am not special. I love making lists and bestowing personal albums-of-the-year accolades like any other avid music blogger with a slight case of undiagnosed OCD.  And yet, while I also voraciously consume as many other lists and mid-December reflections as possible, I rarely find myself agreeing with anyone, much less the majority of my fellow critics. On the one hand, this can be construed as a source of pride, as it gives me a chance to gloat about the one record I think everyone forgot about or faux-license to complain about groupthink and bandwagoneering in the indie landscape, but on the other it’s very isolating and almost shaming to find oneself seemingly out of sync with the rest of the list-making elite, as if I’m here listening to Fang Island for the thirtieth time while proclaiming it album of the year and some indie deity is making one of those “you’re doing it wrong” Internet memes about me unbeknownst to me.

To be honest, when our good editor here at Audiosuede charged us with the task of writing an in-depth piece detailing not only what we think makes our record of choice the awesomest but also how it fits into the “context of the year that was”, I contemplated unfairly for more than a moment about choosing something more populist or more obviously genre-defying than the raucous but largely modest Providence-formed outfit Fang Island. There was no doubt: this was the album I loved the most from 2010, but was it just me? Am I not thinking big enough? Would it look a little like if you had a blank check and could go get dinner anywhere in the world but you chose the burger joint down the street? Without associative critical backing, is my vote for Fang Island no more than the hopeless musical equivalent of a jaded vote for the Green Party on the first Tuesday in November? In the end, my ultimate answers to all of these questions should be obvious, given the name of this post.

However, this isn’t going to stop me from trying to place a playful rock record (a forward-thinking one, I’d argue, but still ostensibly a playful rock record nonetheless) upon the same pedestal that so many are crowding with the bloated self-important egos of West, Butler, Murphy, and more. And if I am to sit here attempting to convince you that my adoration for the howling hurricane of guitars and cacophonous pop-metal infusions that line this short album’s ten tracks isn’t just an intimate obsession, but rather an overarching symbol of something from this year 2010, then I better get down to brass tax. It is in this author’s humble opinion (though I suppose a brasher and more ambitious phrase would be more apt if I really wanted to win you over) that if the popular music, indie or otherwise, of these past twelve months had a linking theme, it’s that everyone’s in love with their own analyses of the self and of the world (and as is the case with some artists, these two things are one in the same).

Simply put, Fang Island and their self-titled album counterpart do not fall in this category. This is just their debut, so who knows where it will go from here (they could very well either disappear or wallow in the misery of self-pity or world-weary anxiety with future releases), but in many ways I completely relish the freshness and doe-eyed authenticity that could only come from a band trying something out and seeing if the spaghetti sticks to the wall or not. Lucky for them (though surely some of it had to do with their talent, both as creative pop-music lovers and technically proficient in their instruments, as the members proved in their past incarnation, the hardcore band Daughters), that macaroni might as well have been glued on with glitter and pipe cleaners, because there’s nary a stray note or pretentious political metaphor in sight here. It’s pure fun. One might argue it must just then be escapist entertainment for the guitar noodling set, but that’d be missing the point: this music may not be Shakespearean, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve recognition at year’s end.

Its rambunctious nature is just what’ll grab your attention. If you let yourself have a moment to absorb the dense melodies and charming heart-on-the-sleeve quasi-choral arrangements, it may just infect you more so than any of those records that already have a million verbose blog posts written about them. After all, I always thought the upside about this whole democratization-of-indie thing (i.e. The Internet) was supposed to widen the field and encourage an unyielding variety of viewpoints and passions, not just another subsect of homogenous taste-making. Oh well, I’ll sleep easy as long as I’ve got Fang Island by my side and the continued chance to espouse the virtues of personal taste.