Photos By: Summer Luu
By: Amanda Martinek
With the class of a Southern gentlemen and the fury of the devil himself, Future Islands’ double night run at the Observatory North Park sucked in the crowd’s souls and never gave them back.
After being properly loosened post-Dan Deacon’s dance party and team building antics, the all ages crowd was as giddy as underage kids sipping their first Smirnoff Ice. Lead singer Sam Herring began with some humble small talk, reminiscing about their first San Diego show in 2007 and how they always love coming back. Well Sam, we’re happy to have you back.
After the polite introduction, his North Carolina-bred sweetness morphed into a snarling, growling, sensually-dancing creature that crept out from a deep dark place, exploding with energy and charisma and something that’s hard to describe with words, something that can only be felt deep down within your soul.
Which is how the majority of Future Island’s songs make you feel. They reach deep down to a strange, buried place and grab the core of your being; who you are or who you want to be or what you’re trying to accomplish. The look on Sam’s performance face is of pure emotion and honesty. It’s the reason David Letterman was left utterly speechless post Late Night performance last year. It’s beautiful and maddening and hard to fully understand but is something that resonates so deeply, it almost hurts.
Making music as Future Islands since 2006 and performing over 250 shows together, they had an extensive set list to work with, expanding their performance past the two-hour mark. It was amazing how lively Herring managed to stay during the entire set, drenched in sweet and eyes bulging out of his head.
The trusty ListenSD panda showed up ready to party and crowd surfed towards the end of the night, eventually partying with the boys at the Hideout after party that Dan Deacon DJ-ed. The next night played to a 21+ crowd and I have to wonder if they had the same level of pure love and excitement that all ages, non-jaded crowd members retain. I hope so, because Future Islands sucked in a piece of my soul that is now forever theirs.