Volcanoes Make Islands Erupt On Their Debut Album
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 20, 2012 7:00PM
It's been awhile since we last heard from Volcanoes Make Islands. We dug their Sick City EP when it came out a few years ago, but while the group has steadily been gigging around town since then, no new music made it's way to us since then. Their proper debut LP, Museum of Endangered Sound, was just released though and it shows the band's kept busy working on new material the whole time.
The band hasn't strayed far from the sound that caused us to grow enamored with them in the first place. The Chicago quartet—Henry Bianco, Brad Sawicki, Alan Takaoka and Todd Hill—have continued to churn out tunes steeped in the sound and feel of college rock past while managing to simultaneously keep things weird but on path. Their previous EP has some stellar highs, but there were moments of self-gratified musical navel gazing that caused the running order to skitter off track here and there. On Museum of Endangered Sound we're now dealing with a band that's learned how to work within it's comfort zone successfully, even when that zone gets a little weird they don't let it throw their music off focus.
We've noticed that what we once considered straight ahead indie rock has been relegated to the oldies bin. And hey, that's cool. But Volcanoes Make Islands traffic in that older sound while sounding like anything but an oldies act. We say this as a point of clarification since their skewed guitars and chunky rhythms are just as liable to suddenly drop into a woozy wobbly as they are to disperse into a ghostly cavernous echo. If you applied those description to the current definition of most other "indie rock" artists it would conjure images of stacks of electronic equipment and all sorts of manipulative board-work or genre mashing. But in the case of Volcanoes Make Islands this is all accomplished with guitars, bass and drums. maybe we're getting crusty, but to hear four individuals so ably create songs that jump through various shades of emotional volume and toy with the concept of the melodic rock song through experimental adventurousness without turning it into either a joke or an over the top mess speaks volumes of the musician's ability. And did we mention that they don't sacrifice melody through all of this so one couldn't even label this adventurous attitude as "difficult listening." Quite to the contrary, we'd label Museum of Endangered Sound as a thoroughly enjoyable yet continually engaging listen.
Stream the new album below in advance of their release party at Schubas later this week.
Volcanoes Make Islands play November 23 at Schubas, 3159 N Southport, 10 p.m., $10, 18+