Undressed is a limited edition 12" vinyl EP featuring four songs recorded for the radio station WYPR in the band's hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.
Two of the tracks - An Apology and Long Flight - can also be heard on the critically acclaimed album In Evening Air released in May 2010. For that record Future Islands were Samuel T. Herring (vocals), J. Gerrit Welmers (synthesizers and programming) and William Cashion (bass) and they unveiled a sound the band define as 'post wave' , a genre that, according to Cashion, means they are "too noisy for new wave and too pussy for punk".
For Undressed the noise level is significantly reduced as the same trio perform these songs unplugged. They are assisted by three other musicians : Denny Bowen on drums, Kate Barutha on cello and Devlin Rice on acoustic guitar.
As you would imagine, the versions here are much more stripped back and basic. Gone are the heavy synths and big production and while Herring's voice still has the same pleading quality, his anguished Waitsian growl is held in check.
Herring's vocals have a distinctly thespian quality. He is like an upper class Englishman who has been press-ganged into rock and roll. If Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh in the movie Mutiny On The Bounty had said to 1st Lt. Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando) " C'mon Christian, stop your moping and give us a tune!", Brando might have come out with something like An Apology. Over a bass line very similar to New Order's Ceremony, he croons memorably to bring out the poetic melodrama of this truly unique track with amazing lyrics like: "tethered to finding a rope, we walk in mysterious ways, and go alone at night to Misery's bed, in Misery's bed we stay". Eat your heart out, Morrissey!
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This is the standout track but the other three songs are pretty damn fine too
In The Fall , formerly on a EP of this title, features piano instead of synthesiser and has a deliciously slow burning quality.
Long Flight is the lament of a man returning home to find his woman who has betrayed him, the cello here adds a tragic beauty very different from the earlier synthpop version .
The final song is a warped lullaby called Little Dream which was the closing song on the band's Wave Like Home in their pre-Thrill Jockey days and has also been subjected to a radical remix treatment on NYC Art Collective 12" on the Free Danger label. Here they tone down the drama and special effects as a tender tale of a lonely boy's dreams realised is delivered with a understated passion and drama Antony Hegerty would be proud of.
The acoustic treatment really allows these remarkable songs to breathe. This is the sound of a band that has found its voice; and what a voice!
Nothing short of magnificent.
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