Back to the future

Future Islands' energetic front man Samuel T Herring tells LAUREN MURPHYthat the three-piece are working up a sweat on their tour and doing the laundry

Future Islands are a band known for their relentless live schedule. How is the European tour going so far?

It’s been really good. We’re doing laundry right now. The glamorous life of a touring band, eh? This is one of my favourite days of the tour, though, because it means I have fresh clothes. I sweat a lot on stage, so I pretty much just ruin my clothes — and carrying around dirty, wet clothes isn’t fun.

Your gigs are certainly energetic, but a lot of your songs are very reflective, which seems to jar with your full-on stage persona. Are you a shy person who uses music as a release, in a way?

I’m not really a shy person; I’m very outgoing and I love to talk to people, but I would say that I much prefer being in front of a crowd of people rather than in a crowd of people. I want to put on a good performance; that’s the way I’d want to watch someone on stage, too. The songs are stories that are very personal, and they may come from a place where there is a deep dejection, or an anger, or a sadness — but it’s me trying to be as honest with our audience as possible, I guess. Our songs aren’t really politically based, or based on anything that’s not outside of the natural world; humans, feelings, emotions. That’s all I know, so that’s all I can really write about.

You grew up with Gerrit [Welmers, keyboardist and drum programmer], but your musical paths didn’t cross until you went to college...

No, I was a loudmouth rapper in high school, so when I went off to college, I wanted to find a producer to make beats for me to perform as a rapper. Hip-hop and jazz were really all I listened to and all I wanted to do. Then I met William [Cashions, bassist/guitarist] on the first day of school, and he was a musician and was using a computer to compose really interesting stuff with field recordings and live instruments. In the beginning, it was basically one musician and three non-musicians in our first band [Art Lord the Self-Portraits]. I was like, ‘This isn’t gonna work’ (laughs), so we brought Gerrit in. As soon as the three of us came together, the music we made has always sort of pulled something out of me.

How has the writing and recording process changed over the course of your three albums? You recorded your debut Wave Like Homein three days, for example...

Our producer, Chester [Gwazda] actually recorded Wave Like Homefor us as part of his junior year college project, so we didn't get to hear it until months later, when he finished the semester (laughs). But we recorded On the Waterat a friend's home in North Carolina, about five hours south of Baltimore in a little town called Elizabeth City. We were isolated, but in a beautiful house near our hometowns, on the river. We didn't have the means to pay for studio time, anyway. I feel like the process for On the Waterwas much easier than In Evening Air. The studio concept is still strange to us; there's something about recording in a house, with its own sound and personality, that can be really interesting, rather than in some studio that thousands of bands have recorded an album in.

Given the close-knit friendship between the three of you, is the possibility of adding a live drummer – rather than sticking with a machine – on the cards?

This is something that the three of us have talked about at length, but I don’t wanna show my cards yet (laughs). I definitely feel like it could make us a great band. Not to say that we aren’t, but I think it could take us to another level. But it would have to be the right person. There’s a friend of ours we’re talking to about maybe trying out, but it’s one of those things that might not happen for another couple of years, or a couple of months. Or it could never happen. The thing is, if we brought in a drummer, I bet we would write a new album in a month. That’s the way it works when you add a new element. You try something new, it’s scary, but it’s a good feeling. We’ll see what happens.

You’re ending your tour in Dublin — what can we expect on March 10th?

Oh, it’s gonna be mental. We haven’t been in Dublin for almost two years, and it’s a city we really love. The last time we were in Dublin, it was the last day of a seven-week tour and we had lost our minds. But when we got there, it was just slam-packed with music, and when we played Inch of Dust, the first four of five rows of people just screamed the words back at me. My body was tired, my mind was broken, but all of a sudden I just felt so alive. The crowd gave me my soul back, basically — so you guys have a lot to live up to at Whelan’s.

Future Islands play Whelan’s on March 10