Pitchfork ranks "Seasons" by Future Islands as the track of the year

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A couple of years ago Future Islands were a tiny indie band on Thrill Jockey, gradually assembling a small but devoted cult. This year they got about as close as an indie rock band can to being a household name. You know what happened in between: a performance on “Late Show With David Letterman”, which found lead singer Sam Herring wilding out and owning the stage with some seriously goofy and committed dancing. Letterman was thunderstruck, and he sensed the gravity of what he’d just witnessed instantly. A meme was born. But while these digital fragments will always cling to this song and are the reason many people heard it, the song itself needed to matter.

All the pieces, starting with the arrangement and production, fell into place. The new wave of the ’80s was and is often mocked: funny haircuts, too many synthesizers, too much melodrama. But it also happens to the genre that best expresses a certain kind of open-hearted yearning. You can tell that Future Islands bassist William Cashion has listened to his share of Peter Hook, and he understands that his instrument is charged with translating emotion musically, seesawing between the “It’s like this, no, it’s like this” chord changes. The synths hover and sweep like credits could roll at any moment.

Like the ephemera that surrounds it, “Seasons (Waiting on You)” contains important things that seem in opposition but music, magic stuff that it is, somehow holds together. You can laugh about it and cry about it at the same time, giving in to its hyper-dramatic thrust makes you feel vulnerable and exposed but also gives you power. Herring was born with that growling voice but there’s always one layer where it sounds a little ridiculous, and then underneath that is a deep core of passion.

The song is a little moment that became a huge one because it expressed something beautiful and recognizable, which is to say it’s quintessential Future Islands. If you ever seen the band live, Herring stalks the stage like a James Brown or a Bruce Springsteen, beating his chest—he simply will not rest until he has personally reached and won over every person in the room. Irony is out the window, even if humor is not. On “Seasons”, he and the band demand human connection, acting as if it’s a matter of life and death, which of course it is.

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