Future Islands

31:16And we rented a cabin just out in the woods with a group of friends. And it was a really nice time. One night we ate some mushrooms. And I'm like staring at a tree with Dan Deacon, just like, that tree is amazing. And talking to him about this recent split with someone, you know, and kind of the realization that I had this very short relationship with a person at a time when we were finishing our fifth album, The Far Field, or we were working on our fifth album, The Far Field. and I was very devoid of emotion at that time and I didn't have anything to write about. I'd just been on the road for three years straight and I was destabilized just because of the way my life was.

31:59But I told Dan about this thing, going through this breakup and, you know, but at least I'm going to get some juicy songs out of it. And I did. I like mined that thing. And then it's like, oh yeah, I got into a relationship with a person that I really had nothing in common with other than we were attracted to one another because I knew that it would fail there was no way this thing was actually going to work and then I could take from it and uh and Dan but what Dan said to me was just like I mean basically looked at me and cried and said I don't like to see you hurting I don't like to see you doing this I feel like you're doing this to yourself and and it was a very emotional moment that moment made me change the way I made that joke because it wasn't a joke like if you really look at that on the surface what the truth of that is pretty actually disgusting.

32:50I mean, of course, this is a mutual attraction between people, but you're just like, yeah, I shouldn't even been there. I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't waste my time or somebody else's time. I shouldn't be making light of art. And that's one of the reasons that I have issues with that record is that I feel that I was kind of empty in those years after the success of Singles. I was our fourth album and I felt really empty and lost and confused about where I was. I used to be so sure of myself as an artist and what I had to give and why it was important to give. But what I missed, the thing that I was also not doing was saving anything for myself.

33:33I was just giving it all away and not looking. And that's what Dan was saying. I wasn't looking out for my own emotions. I was giving and I was looking for failure so that I could idealistically get through their issues in their lives, but I wasn't actually protecting myself. I wasn't keeping anything for myself. And there's still a part of me now that does fear that it's time to stop sharing about my romantic life. And that becomes fearful because you're like, well, that's kind of, it's kind of the story of our albums, you know, like, like, the albums have become this chronicle of my life. And I fear, I don't think, it's really hard to shut the faucet when it's open, you know?

34:30Yeah, I mean, but also, like, would that make a difference for you personally? Do you think you would be able to reach a point with someone that would be like unchartered territory if you're not so open about what you're going through in your experience. What would you actually achieve, do you think, by not sharing so much? No idea. And it's almost like a challenge. Maybe just like, I'm going to try something different because what I've been doing hasn't been working. It's not serving me. Is it that sort of feeling? Well, it's also, you know, the other thing that happened when I got back from Sweden was that I went to therapy for the first time.

35:08And in doing that, you realize, you know, it, well, it was, I went because I was terrified of spiraling out of control into a place that I've been before, you know. Like a substance abuse type situation. Substance abuse, you know, just like too much sex, too much drinking, too much drugs. I was like, I'm not that person anymore. I don't want to be that person anymore. I was so happy when I was in a relationship for years with someone who I really cared about and thought that was my future because I didn't have to go back to those places of emptiness. I finally had somebody to share with. And in getting out of that, I was like, I don't want to go back there.

35:49I don't want to be at that place in 2017 and 2018 where I felt really empty. I want to continue this feeling of feeling like I'm on a positive path for myself. and looking out for myself. Because so often, especially within relationships, I look out for the other person and I don't look out for myself, which is actually more of a burden, as I would find through therapy, is more of a burden on that person. But through that process of, they just really just reflect me onto me so I can see me. And it made me see that, okay, I write these songs about these relationships, they're cycling. Like I'm writing a song that I could have written about the same relationship eight years ago.

36:33I don't think the problem is the people. There's something else that needs to be broken in this process. There's more to explore within myself to illuminate something deeper. I saw a YouTube comment a couple, maybe two or three months ago on a new song of ours. And the guy was just like, I wish this guy would stop singing about love because some of us have never had love and will never have love. We'll be alone forever. And I was just like, bro, please don't feel that way. It's going to be okay. It made me really sad that, but it also was like, okay, I guess there actually are people that don't, you know, because for me, I'm always trying to find a universal way to sing about all manners of feelings.

37:23How much do you think about your perceived audience when you're writing? Not too much. I mean, of course I think about them, but if it's a good song that... Good songs just write themselves. I mean, good to me. So I should be clear that, you know, what I think is a good Future Island song is not everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. But I know that if I feel, if a song makes me feel, it has the potential to move people. I don't really remember writing the good songs. I don't really remember writing songs, except for maybe ones that I've struggled with. But the ones you struggle with, you're really proud of, but they aren't the hits.

38:07As a songwriter, what do you think you're best at? Just channeling emotion of music. That is my goal, is to connect with the music and speak for it. Like the partnership of me, William and Garrett, that's a relationship that's gone back coming up on 21 years. And the thing is, when we started making music, William had never played bass before and Garrett had never played keyboards before. And I was a rapper. I could sing. I knew I could sing, but I wasn't a singer. And I didn't want to be a singer. I wanted to be a rapper. and that was my goal like going to school musically I was like wanted to find a producer to make beats and and uh so the strange thing is the way that we grew was really together like everybody kind of learned these new instruments together and and the fact is is like for being an 18 year old kid who never wanted to sing in a band I immediately because I didn't think it was cool really what didn't you think was cool about it well to me bands were like like they were like whiny which is really funny because like future islands is so emotional but yeah bands were like whiny and guitar-y i didn't like guitars i was just like you know i like beats yeah i like i like descending i love the falling blocks is what i call them like these kind of descending synth lines and sample based stuff and i just didn't i i was never drawn to guitar rock.

39:49I'm still not. It's just not my thing. It took me a long time to even get into like, I'm a big jazz head, but it took me a long time to even get down with jazz guitar. I love a little Django, but I mean like electric jazz guitars. It's cool. There's some greats. Anyways, let's not talk. But yeah, it just didn't appeal to me. But the thing is, is like when those guys started making music together, it pulled something from me that I couldn't explain. And I still just like get this feeling. And I don't know if it's because of a deeper connection with those guys, especially like, you know, me and Garrett were best friends through high school and went off to college together.

40:33I never made music because Garrett played guitar, you know, and he was like he was like a metal guitarist. You know, he was just like ripping on his Jackson. Yeah, you know, and I'm like, yeah, me and Garrett obviously are not going to make music together. So then for him to kind of come into this conceptual project that me and William had together was really cool to have my best friend. And then all of a sudden, him and William were just like melding and like learning and creating really very quickly. Like within six or seven months, they were creating these really beautiful ideas from this kind of from scratch, you know, from where we started.

41:10where it was a little loose. But anyways, that's just like a thing that has continued to pull for me. But as Garrett, you know, Garrett being my best friend when we were kids, you know, a lot of our friendship was based around mutual anger and alienation about, you know, the world as 14-year-old kids who didn't feel like we fit in and felt like the way 14-year-old kids are, everybody's full of shit. What were you guys like? Like, what were you like in middle school and high school? I mean, Garrett was a skater. I hung out with skaters when we were 12 or 13. And then I shouldn't give away all Garrett's secrets.

41:49That's for him to give away. But I started smoking cigarettes and smoking weed and went away. We were both played sports and stuff, but then we kind of went away from that. I got really into a kind of discovered poetry, weed and drawing all at the same time. And that kind of became my life. And, you know, through that hip hop. And I was very much, you know, by the time I was like 15, 16, I was like, I'm an artist and I'm a rapper. And I know exactly who I am. And, yeah, I was just on this journey with words. And, you know, Garrett was, we were both like really into art. we had a short-lived graffiti crew that was not very cool it was just the two of us we're like go behind the kmart and we're like we're gonna do a bombing run on the kmart oh yeah was there anyone in your family who was artists like did you have anyone to look up to yeah my well my have like a small family just me and an older brother i mean my brother was the one who turned me on to he turned me on to hip-hop i mean he was the one that brought the records home yeah and uh he was all into Pantera and crazy into Jane's addiction and Danzig.

43:01And I love Danzig, but I didn't get Jane's addiction at all when I was younger. I can really appreciate some of it now, but back then I was just like, was terrified about what was happening to my brother. He had like, he had like holes punched in the wall with like pictures of Perry Farrell in them with, he had one that it said like written in like oil crayon around on the wall, just like, in this hole lives the wicked king. And I was just like, this is, I'm very concerned about my big brother. My parents were too. I mean, that actually affected me really deeply because when I was 10, I went snooping through my brother's room when I played hooky from school to see what kind of trouble he had that I could get into.

43:44And I found Jane's addiction uh this movie called the gift that he did it's like heroin overdoses yeah necrophilia yeah oh right and he had so it was that and he also had uh gg allen hated so i was like 10 11 years old watching a grown man throw feces around naked and i was like i was just like i think i want to get into music uh were you close with your parents at that time like what was your relationship? They were always like kind of supported music and art. And it was years later until I found out that my dad was a painter when he was a kid. Oh, wow. My dad built a lot of furniture. Wow. That's cool.

44:29But my mom played piano and loved to play and sing. So there was always like stacks of sheet music in the house. And that was kind of something that me and my brother and my mom shared. Still to this day when it's around Christmas time, my mom and brother will sit up at the piano and play Christmas songs. But also the other thing that happens is then they do all of Jesus Christ Superstar. And if you've seen me perform, you think that I'm a big showman, but you should see my brother do Jesus Christ Superstar in the living room. yeah I mean it came from somewhere yeah uh my brother was really the first front person I ever saw in person you know he was and that was a big thing too like he was the one who was in bands so when I when I discovered rap that that was kind of like oh that's what I'm gonna do because Joel does Joel's in bands so I'll do this thing you know it'd be kind of like it was still like out of some want to impress him, but at the same time it was...

45:33Differentiating your path. Yeah, having my own thing and it feeling more like mine. And also that probably had something to do with like, I always, you know, that partnership with Garrett and William and now with Mike are so important to me, but I've always been from a young age very alone, you know, in how I want to move or at least how I feel comfortable in the world is it's that lone wolf syndrome, you know. I think it's actually a symptom more of feeling, you know, that alienation and isolation at a young age and not feeling like I fit in. So then I accepted being different to be like, oh, no, I choose this.

46:13Yeah. One last quick break and then the rest of Leah's conversation with Samuel T. Herring. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at an Oocla speed test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand.

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47:42They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you. It's built for people who know that understanding music means understanding the human stories behind it.

48:15Claude doesn't just compile facts. It helps you see patterns across decades of music history, ask the kinds of follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and works through the nuanced relationships between artists, movements, and moments. Whether you're a music journalist, industry professional, or someone who just lives for understanding the stories behind the sounds, Claude matches your level of curiosity about what really drives great art. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive.

48:57The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. And now the rest of Samuel T. Herring. I noticed on this new album, there's a lot of imagery.

49:35You mentioned night a lot. And was there something specific that happened at night? Or is that just a time of day that you feel particularly reflective? That's really funny. I didn't realize how much I talked about night. Yes, it is. I think the night carries. And this once again goes to, I really believe in using these very simple ideas to tell the stories, to try to reach as many people as possible. And in the way that the day has certain connotations, but different times of day have different meaning. The sunrise means something different than the sunset and in the same way the first fall of night you know deep in the middle of the night or or the end of night hoping for the morning and in these kinds of things like i think for me i spent a lot of time in this album it felt like it was all through pandemic and then after the pandemic but but the pandemic was like had created an environment where the sun didn't come out again for a bit because of the split.

50:50And then my life feeling like I didn't know what was up or down or what was night and day. And the night scared me. Being alone. Yeah, being alone and being afraid of those things that I'd said, like being afraid of the ghosts of my past to come back. And I was probably going to bed at 8.30, 9 every night after that because I just didn't want to be tempted by it. I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts, which is all I was. When I was writing a lot of this album, it felt like it wasn't ever going to end. I think that's why those moments are important. The way the garden wheel ends the record is to say that the things rise again and the sun is out again.

51:43We're out of the room. But at the same time, King of Sweden starts the record. There's a line in that song that is an inside story between me and this person. But there was a time I was driving down a back road in the countryside in southern Sweden. And I could see the moon through the clouds, this big, bright moon, the perfect circle of it, hazy through the clouds, low on the horizon. And I was like, the moon is beautiful. And she was just like, dude, that's the sun. The moon. I was like, the moon is shining through the clouds in the daytime. she's like you're like a nocturnal creature who should not be out during but then we just like laughed i was like that's hilarious but yeah i say in this the line you know the the moon was low and incensed or was it the sun in the horizon uh that lit the figure in the distance and that's that's how the the the song start or the album starts with king of sweden and the sun low on the horizon going down into the night and then and then we rise up again with the last song.

52:53King of Sweden is such a good song. Thank you. Thank you very much. When you finish that song, were you like, oh, this is like a banger. Like, this is a good one. Yeah. Yeah, that one felt really good. And a lot of those, pretty much all the cadences, and I would say about 50 % of the words, if not more, were actually freestyles. Were freestyle improvisations. We wrote that on a jam. And then I was like, you know, press record. And I was just like, getting that flow. And I was like, this feels really good. It feels fun. It's really, really good. And then I believe it's the second song, The Tower.

53:34Mm-hmm. Do you think about the little like, I, I, like, are those things that you add in intentionally for the song to be catchy? Or is that just how the song worked itself out? Well, that's just how it got wrote. That's my Southern coming out. That's how it got wrote. Yeah, no, no, that was an intentional hook put in. I'm glad that you think it's hooky. Yeah, I mean, I think it's the type of song where like by the second or third verse, the first time hearing it, as a listener, you can start participating with it. And it's, you know, you can repeat it and it hooks you in really quickly. It is funny because I was home at Thanksgiving and I shared the finished record with my parents.

54:23My mom was doing that around the house. Hi. Just like here in different rooms. Yeah. I was like, oh, that's cute. That's real cute. But it's actually funny because if you're, you know, there's probably like 500 people out there that would know. But our first band, Art Lord and the Self-Portraits, had a song. One of the last songs we wrote was a really awesome song called I, I, I. And I would be like, I, I, I, I. Is that the band that you were kind of like a character? Yeah, yeah. That was me and William and Garrett's first group before Future Islands. So what was the thinking behind the character?

55:01What was that all about? Well, I told you that when I went to college, I didn't want to be in a band, I wanted to be a rapper. And that's kind of how I saw it. And then when I met William, I was also really into conceptual and performance art and had discovered that, you know, you can stand anywhere you want and do a performance. If it's a performance to you, you know, you can stand on the sidewalk and do a performance and you can create art in any moment. These ideas as a very stoned 17, 18-year-old were mind-blowing to me that I could make art that didn't have a product. It was creating reactions, creating something for people, hopefully good.

55:48And I think that's something that still is a big part of when we started Art Lord and the Self-Portraits, and it's still a big part of myself today, which is trying to create reactions within an audience in a live setting because I know the value of that. Whether negative or positive, the experience or the reaction that you get, it is still pulling something from people. It's causing them to think or feel. That's been the goal of this band for a long time is to create that safe space for an audience to be able to feel free and feel like they can be vulnerable and not be afraid. Because if we're on stage and we're coming from a PowerPoint, a place where we have your attention and we can share strong emotion and we can cry and we can fight through things and still be strong and share in that moment, then we can just illustrate through living this emotion.

57:03So it's a long process. Life is long. It's not life is short. I lived by that idea for so many years of my life, just thinking that I was going to die, expecting death, wanting death, and really coming to terms in the last 10 years like, nope, it's going to keep going. and you got to find better ways to get through it and enjoy things and enjoy people and to have a good life instead of putting yourself into a bad place. Yeah. I mean, that's been a big change. In the last few years, we've made the decision to stop touring so much and to make more space for our own lives. And part of that is just because it just doesn't feel this if touring feels a lot different between 25 and 40.

58:00Yeah I imagine so. Is that where you get the biggest financial gain is through touring so making that decision is that changing the way that you know you're going to do financially in a year? Yeah part of that is part of that is an acceptance of for me personally what I need to make a life work. I mean of course there was the time where we couldn't take a day off on a tour because if you take a day off then you lose money and yeah and there isn't any money you can't afford to take time off so that that kind of the our diy ethos leaked into a time when we could have taken a break and and because of that we really hit the wall hard a couple times and the fear of hitting the wall again is does the next time you hit the wall, the last one, you know, because you do run the high risk, not even, you don't even run the risk of exhaustion being a touring musician.

58:58You will get exhausted and some people don't recover from that, you know, it mentally scars them and affects them. I deal, I have my own damage from touring and the things that it's done to my personal life, the things that it's done to me physically. I have a busted knee from playing shows and I now associate... The month before tour is really hard for me because I know that I'm about to put myself in pain. So it's like I'm psychologically scarred. So this thing that brings me so much joy and gives me purpose is also causes me great pain. And, you know, I'm doing all kinds of things. I'm in physical therapy to like try to get to a better place with my knee and make it sustainable.

59:53But that's what the, you know, paring down from playing 150 shows a year to playing 100 shows and now probably down to like 50 or 60 is where we're at now. And not pushing past that is about making the decision to do this for the rest of our lives. We could either do this 150 shows a year for the next five years until we never want to do this again, or we can play 50 shows a year for years and years, and also be more interesting within our music because we can actually take the breaks to live life so we have something to reflect on and have something to speak about and connect with people on. Like, we have our first, you know, baby in the band.

1:00:39And like, I don't want that child to grow up without their dad around. Is that Garrett? Garrett has a baby? Yeah. And I, and I, and that's, it's really important to me that everybody is happy. I think that, I think that's where we all got to. And I, and I know that I don't need, you know, this potential amount of money to be happy. Like that's going to make me less happy. I only need like this to survive, you know. Let me just play the shows and like get that joy, not hurt myself, not hurt my friends and, you know, feed the audience, but like also hold something for ourselves and enjoy life. Yeah.

1:01:24Well, congratulations on the new album and the promo and everything that's to come. It sounds like you're in a great space. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate you. Yeah, yeah. No, but I really appreciate you taking the time and making space for us on your podcast. Thanks to Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands for chatting about the band's latest album, People Who Aren't There Anymore. You can hear it along with our other favorite Future Islands songs on a playlist at brokenrecordpodcast.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash brokenrecordpodcast where you can find all of our new episodes.

1:02:02You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Toleday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats.

1:02:39I'm Justin Richman. The more you learn about your favorite artists, the more you want to know. Claude helps you keep digging, finding new threads and rabbit holes to explore. Whether it's discovering deeper meaning behind a detail in an interview or figuring out the influence behind an artist's particular era. Claude thinks with you to find the next clue. If you can't get enough of the stories behind your favorite music and artists, Claude will help you discover new layers you didn't know existed. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty, if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive.

1:03:22The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Traveling is one of life's greatest joys.

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