"I woke up thristy / the day I died" I'm a little behind, considering this album was released in 2006, but I only found out about Islands a few months ago. Besides, I'm restless, and the album is worth writing about--it's accessible, but troubling. Perhaps it's my liberal arts background, or perhaps it's that I'm currently reading Rushdie's Satanic Verses , but its difficult to ignore the tones of reincarnation lingering throughout this album. Its title alone conjures common death/rebirth motifs: the ancient mariner, baptism, Odysseus--that irrevocable notion of returning to some salty silence, real or imagined, only to emerge once more; to return to return, etc. And when the parenthetical addition to the title track is "Life After Death," well, it becomes a little obvious there's more here than a few quirky tunes. The songs also toy with the metaphor of joining, and on many tracks there is a logical collision in verse between I/you/w...
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