At any venue other than the Ottobar you pay for your ticket and you receive the requisite amount of songs, witty between-song banter and stage antics. You don't pay to get to know the band; you pay to see someone put on a show. Concert-goers who were expecting this and nothing more must have been disappointed by the Islands' show at the Ottobar on Friday.
Opening with the light calypso tune, "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby" Nick Diamonds of Islands seemed less than pleased to be on stage, practically whispering the lyrics, eyes closed. Out to pick a fight, Diamonds quickly found an audience member to bicker with early in the set. His sulky demeanor contrasted oddly with the band's peppy pop songs. Bathing in rage, he continued bickering with the object of his discontent, commenting, "I'm doing everything in my power right now to stop myself from throwing this guitar at you" just before telling security to throw the guy out.
The performance was, however, not without good moments. The ever-popular "Where There's A Will, There's a Whalebone," which usually features a solo by rapper Cadence Weapon, instead had a duet of intense fiddling by Alex and Sebastian Chow. The audience had the chance to hear a few songs from Islands' yet-to-be-released sophomore album. These songs on first listen seemed less subtle than those on the band's first album, Return to the Sea.
After the final song of the main set, Rough Gem, which appropriately revolves around Diamonds' name, Islands graciously jumped back on stage for a two-song encore, at the beginning of which Diamonds apologized for his behavior, seemingly in better humor. After ending with the charming ditty "Bucky Little Wing," chosen, as Diamonds said, because it is about friendship, Diamonds signed off by meekly saying "I'm sorry" and stepping off the stage.
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Diamonds himself over the phone:
News-Letter: So lately you've had a lot of reshuffling of band members and some pretty extensive touring on top of that. Is all this putting stress on the band?
Nick Diamonds: Surprisingly I think everyone is learning to cope with being constantly surrounded by human beings all the time. I think sometimes it gets a little trying like you know a month and a half into a tour. Like this tour we're about to do is two months, so it'll be interesting to see what actually happens, but um, a month and a half in, I think tensions start to flare and hackles are raised, and you know people get annoyed with people's habits and little personality ticks and personality traits and that kind of thing so, we'll see ...
N-L: So last I heard your girlfriend Kate had joined Islands. What's it like having her in the band?
ND: Well she dropped out of the band because ... it was great having her, she's a wonderful musician and she had wonderful ideas, but she has, she's applying for grad school, her Ph.D. and stuff. So she had to take a bunch of tests during the time that we were on this next tour. So we've whittled it down to six, the finalized lineup is the six of us, Aaron is the newest, the drummer who replaced Jamie, and he's doing a bit of singing too. Yeah no but it was hard, it was hard having a relationship on the road. It's just an intense, it's an intensified version of being in a band with someone because being in a band with someone is already like being in a relationship with someone, so being in a band, in a relationship with someone is just like looking at yourself in a mirror, with a mirror or yourself looking at your reflection -- you know what I mean? It's tricky. It's psychedelic.
N-L: You said before that you're going to begin recording the next album in January or February -- is that still the plan?
ND: Yeah, we might do it as early November -- right after we get off tour.
N-L: So do you have a sense of what direction the next album will go in -- do you see it as having similar influences and sounds as Return to the Sea, or as going in a different direction?
ND: It's going in a different direction a little bit. It's a little heavier lyrically and sonically but also, like physically. It's a rockier record but also more existential lyrics. It's different, it's better -- it's better, it's different, it's little, it's yellow. It's rock and roll, I think more of a rock and roll record. The last record was more I think a pop record. But it's kind of like a '60s throwback, it's retro-futurism, I think is the term. So it's a throwback, it's Back to the Future. I wanted to call the record that but...
N-L: Is there any chance Jamie will be playing on this next album?
ND: No, initially I kind of hoped that would happen. But as we kind of got this lineup set up it just didn't make sense, you know he's gone on a completely different life path, and it sounds like a cereal or some a really new age-y expression, he's on his own kind of trajectory and we're doing our thing, and Aaron is a really fabulous drummer and is more than capable of playing, and he's in the band. This band, I want it to be treated like a real band. Even though it was started without the others, it's really blossomed...
N-L: Back to Return to the Sea, "Bucky Little Wing" is one of my favorite songs, and I've always wondered if the character in that song was a real friend of yours.
ND: He was, it's a very literal song. It's about a guy named Bucky Little Wing that I used to be friends with when I was younger in my small town where I grew up [in Campbell River].
N-L: What kind of music are you listening to these days?
ND: What kind of music... I don't know always the same nothing new really. Like Queen and Jim Guthrie, who used to play with us for a while. Lee Scratch Perry, T-Rex... I always draw blanks at this its funny because I have a large record collection. I like Edan he's this Boston rapper, and I like Richard Holly, he's this crooner from England. Gina Washington the old soul singer from Detroit in the '60s...
N-L: You live in Montreal, so I'm wondering if you have an opinion as to why recently a lot of bands from Montreal have been getting so much attention?
ND: Boy. I mean, I don't want to take all the credit for that, but you know I kind of have to, I kind of have to take the credit. It was me, pretty much.
N-L: How's that?
ND: I mean I'm pretty much responsible for every single band in this town. All the success that everyone in this town has outside of Canada is by and large due to my existence.
N-L: So what's your association with a band like Arcade Fire?
ND: They opened for the Unicorns for like a month before their record came out in the summer. And it was their first introduction to the U.S. market.
N-L: Well the world thanks you.
ND: I know. The world owes me.
