Islands

Album Title: Ski Mask
Record Label: Manqué Music
Review by John Noyd
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Islands - Ski MaskIslands - Ski Mask

Disguising its despising in ironic pop-rock tonics whose bubbly cabaret betrays a wicked streak of cheeky conceits, “Ski Mask,” adapts an amiably ambling manner to its steel-trap attacks for philosophical demagoguery stuffed inside taut melodic opulence. Despite a rainbow of instruments and styles, the rose-colored glasses are nowhere in sight as savory new wave, smug indie-pop and staunch alt-rock launch sharp wit and squirming wordplay around soft melancholy and floundering heartache. Casting characters for narratives that are desperate and daring, the former front-man for the Unicorns and prolific misfit for Islands Nick Thorburn channels his skillful willful talent for sly bile, erecting a catchy net to filter life’s dodgy apologies into sour-grape escapes. Catch Nick and the band when they play UW-Madison’s Rathskellar Oct. 12th.

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