Fang Island
Doesn’t Exist II: The Complete Recordings
JOYFUL NOISE
Modern pop records can be a heady challenge. Beyoncé’s last album, for example, is a 27-track epic, while the maximalist psychedelia of Childish Gambino’s latest is often straight-up exhausting. If, weary traveller, you need a rest from all this (often, admittedly, wonderful) modern musical madness and are seeking something more straightforward, upbeat, and colorful, may I invite you to rediscover the joys of Fang Island. You’ll find no cacophonous experimentation here, no scathing explorations of inhumanity, nor any unexpected proddings of your perhaps-fragile emotional makeup. Nope, Fang Island just want to make you smile. This is, after all, a band who famously described their sound as “everyone high-fiving everyone.”
Formed in the fertile mid-aughts arts scene of Providence, Rhode Island, Fang Island’s upbeat, major-key rock took them to the brink of the indie mainstream during their decade together as a band, garnering rave reviews and scoring them support slots with the likes of The Flaming Lips and Stone Temple Pilots. However, the band played their last show in 2014, leaving behind two full-lengths, two EPs, and a few other odds and ends. This whole discography has now been compiled as Doesn’t Exist II, a vinyl and digital reissue that remasters and repackages the entirety of Fang Island’s wonderful and relentlessly joyous world.
The band’s first proper EP, Day of the Great Leap, was the release most in need of a remaster. It sounds much better here, although the tracks very much remain those of a band in the process of figuring out what they do best. 2008’s follow-up EP Sky Gardens is where fireworks start to really go off—“Curaga” is pure euphoria, while the interlocking guitars of “Trustfall” are a brief delight, introducing a dreamy, lean math-/glam-rock instrumental combo. After all, for all their love of shredding, Fang Island were always more interested in using propulsive riffs to incite pure joy, rather than to impress with technical excellence or cerebral flair.
Their 2010 self-titled debut remains their finest (half) hour: a sugar-coated and endlessly surprising record that ventures beyond the guitar-and-drums rock formula of the band’s early EPs, speckled with the sounds of actual fireworks hinted at on Sky Gardens as it opens and closes. “Treeton” is perhaps the band’s finest track, riding as it does a wonderful bounce of giddy keys and nonsensical vocal chants before evolving into a magical mid-tempo glam catharsis. “Life Coach” uses maximalist keys to colossal effect, while “Davy Crockett” provides further woah-woah-woah vocals that wash over you like the closing credits to the movie of your life, one that’s been very happily lived.
Major marked Fang Island’s final release. The new remaster subtly improves on the 2012 LP’s slightly quiet original mix, which still lacks some of the clear sheen of its predecessor. Nonetheless, it’s a great record, one that sticks closer to the formula of the guitar-led early EPs. Tracks like “Sisterly” and “Make Me” are the most confident Fang Island ever sounded in terms of vocal melodies, while instrumental cuts like “Chompers” and its awesome dual (triple?) tapping melodies are never far behind. Also included in Doesn’t Exist II are two killer standalone tracks: 2010’s “Patterns on the Wall,” which features a vibe-matching Andrew W.K., and “Starquake,” an instrumental shred-athon that feels like the perfect final word on Fang Island, given that it was written in their early days of 2006 but not recorded until their end in 2014.
There’s simply no better time to immerse yourself in the delightful fantasy realm of Fang Island. Not only is the tone of their music almost maniacally positive, it possesses a clarity of vision, a commitment to giddy lucidity and friendly likability that makes it a warm refuge from a world defined by increasing madness. Here’s to a great rock band, the kind we may never see the likes of again.
