The Far Field

The Far Field is Future Islands' 5th album. The first single, “Ran” was released in January before the album release on April 7, 2017.

The title for The Far Field comes from a poem of the same name by Theodore Roethke, as In Evening Air came from “In Evening Air”. The artwork for both albums was done by Kymia Nawabi—the painting on the cover of “The Far Field” is titled Chrysanthemum Trance.

Future Islands started writing the album in early January 2016 in a rented beach house in North Carolina, they tested the songs live that summer, and recorded them later that year, with producer Jon Congleton. Keyboardist Gerrit Welmers explained in a 2017 interview:

We took almost all of 2016 off just trying to write as many songs as we possibly could before we decided to record. We ended up getting around 24 demos written in that time and from those we chose which were the strongest pieces and recorded them in late November in Los Angeles. So I think the main difference was really being able to take the time to think about what had happened to us over the three years of touring since, well the Letterman performance, where things really escalated for us.