Singles

Released on March 24, 2014, Singles was Future Islands' 4th album. Producer of their previous albums Chester Endersby Gwazda was unavailable, so the band called in producer Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Grizzly Bear, Beach House).

This was the first time the band used a professional studio, recording the album in 16 days in August 2013 at Dreamland Studios in Hurley, New York. Future Islands started writing months earlier in a hunting cabin, and of 25 songs only 10 made the cut. Its lead single “Seasons (Waiting on You)” was considered the best track of 2014 by Pitchfork Media, NME, and Spin.

On the album’s title and theme, the band explained:

We’ve actually got a long-running joke in the band which is that we don’t write b-sides; it’s all solid gold. It’s like, why write a song if it’s no good? So the title is reflective of that joke, but also a statement of the confidence we have in what we do. […] I feel like the record pulls from all our previous records, and explores a lot of the themes we’ve touched on in the past, like love and loss, and childhood memories. There’s definitely a confirmation of self in there too.