The Underground of Happiness

Chapter 6 Late April. The first road trip of the year. Low in Vicar Street . I hadn’t seen them since 2012 at a steaming Cyprus Avenue. One of my favourite all time shows. Before that Primavera 2009 at midnight by the Mediterranean. And Nancy Spain’s in 2000 - fragile, weblike. But this was another order of thing altogether. They arrived on stage backlit and played the first half of the new album Hey what. The exultant I can wait. The spitting Days like these. The surging All night. Mimi’s nonchalant devastating la la las. I was emotional. In the summer Mimi’s cancer diagnosis was announced. In the autumn her death. And then this gig took on even more epic proportions. To think she chose to spend some of her last days with us. Nothing short of life changing this band. HEY WHAT by Low

Photo: Debi Del Grande It’s been over a month since I had the great great pleasure to see Future Islands in the flesh. I deliberately wanted to wait a while before writing down some thoughts about the gig. This is a band I’ve been loving on record for over 4 years but who I’d never seen play live before. So I wanted to be sure I was processing the experience fully. You’ll know all about Sam Herring’s dancing by now, courtesy of that Letterman performance. The Sam Herring Limbo. I feel like it’d be worth going to see Future Islands just to admire the man’s style. And stamina. I don’t know where he gets it. It’s bordering on superhuman. (Side note: the internet is waiting for a gif of the sweat map that progresses across Herring’s shirt over the course of a gig. In Vicar Street , full coverage and colour change were complete in time for the encore.) You’ll know all about the top drawer tunes, taking a whisper of New Order and lighting a rocket under it. In 2010, they ...