Canada’s indie rock outfit Islands recently announced the name and release date of their forthcoming LP — A Sleep & A Forgetting.  I love love love Islands, so naturally this news was the highlight of my day.

While A Sleep & A Forgetting continues the band’s penchant for crafting adventuresome and infectious state of the art pop music, this time band leader Nick Thorburn has infused the songs with a personal introspection that gives the record a new and powerful emotional resonance.

“This album is far more personal than any I’ve made before,” Thorburn explains. “I left New York after the end of a relationship and came to Los Angeles. There was a piano where I was staying and that’s where I wrote these songs. This record deals with loss, with memory and forgetting and with dreaming. I started writing it on Valentine’s Day and it’s coming out on Valentine’s Day.”

A Sleep & A Forgetting is the anticipated follow up to Islands’ critically heralded record Vapours, which Black Book described as “infectious and weird….masterful” and Popmatters proclaimed “a damn fine record.” The new album was produced by Thorburn and fellow Islands member Evan Gordon in less than two weeks, the 11 songs recorded live with hardly a single overdub. It’s a stripped down process and beautifully understated sound which only reinforces the confessional content of the lyrics.

The new album offers all the shimmering sonic textures and irresistible melodies that have come to define Islands’ enduring appeal, but there is a deeply personal cathartic undercurrent to the songs. “The sound is really my interpretation of soul music,” Thorburn offers. “I mean, I’m a white kid from Canada so it’s gonna be very warped. But that’s where my head was at, that particular way of dealing with themes of pain and heartbreak.” [source: antilabelblog]

A Sleep & A Forgetting is due out this February 14th via Anti-Records.  In the meantime, be sure to check out Thorburn’s side project/supergroup Mister Heavenly, which should tide you over until Valentine’s Day.

♫ Islands – Swans [Life After Death] (daytrotter session) ♫

♫ Mister Heavenly – Pineapple Girl ♫