Expect many critics and their empowered multiples to heap on Arm’s Way for having big choruses, an orchestra fetish, and lyrics about murder and other heart-of-dorkness topics. Worse, expect grumbling about the way it broadens Islands’ sound to include Big Sincerity as well as absurdism. Critical multiples everywhere are irritated and displeased, and can we really blame them? Introducing sincerity to progressive rock is a dangerous move, and it has capsized bigger ships than theirs. It will destroy no fewer than five bands this year. However, even beyond this, if a band doesn't ruin their credibility themselves this way, then we critics will be happy to say they did, because we’re a peculiar tribe and many of us are clinically insane.
At bottom, we love quick music like The Unicorns, because we listen to mountains of terrible music voluntarily. Mind you, it’s voluntary – in an “I am an addict, and I have a problem” sort of way. As a result, we’ve heard every flavor of hackwork imaginable and discovered the horrible truth that is available only to the mad: art is transient and empty; there is no canon; it does you no good listening to music; and fun is ultimately the only value of anything – and so in a terrible, abyssal way, fun is a superior aesthetic value. Fun is right and the proper use for music. We are guilty of having not-fun, and our anger with serious things like Arm’s Way is guilty anger. Worse, music this arranged is completely at odds with my schedule, which will require that I have a big new obsession in about half a week, so I want to resent anybody who’d make music that I had to be into.
The trouble is, Arm’s Way is a detailed, richly-rewarding album. These are undeniably melodramatic AOR songs – but they’re nuanced in form, graced with melody, and any obvious tropes are usually subverted. Yes, it has a scene-setting song, an enormous and obvious “denouement” that Roland Orzabal is eying enviously, and lots of shout-outs to lamely shout-outy stuff – electroid dance New Romantics nonsense, that whole European dirge fad, minimalism, and so forth. All of this would seem exploitative if it weren’t so skillful and conscious. That’s the critical thing and consequently the one I expect critics to overlook: the big arrangements and long, slow passages are all put to use here. So, for the record’s many flaws – and man, there are some stigmas that Big Sincerity can never escape – hollow presumption isn’t one of them. That nebulous whatever-ness – whatever distinguishes an Apple Venus from a Welcome To The Black Parade – is everywhere on this record.
More about: Islands
