Fang Island – the name brings ideas of a castaway living on a faraway island in the middle of the sea, trapped. Storms ravage and starvation is a constant threat. However, once you listen to the first track on Fang Island's self-titled sophomore record (that's a new one), you'll realize that life on an island isn't so bad – you got sun, waves, and of course you'll get a nice tan.

Let me explain what I mean. Fang Island is hyper-active indie rock that's happy enough to make you grin, no matter the mood. The overlapping riffs and bleeping synths makes for a powerful experience. They describe themselves as "everyone high-fiving eachother," which pretty much makes the rest of my review completely redundant.

The first track, Dreams of Dreams, opens with sounds that are either fireworks, or popcorn popping. For the sake of the review, I'm going to with fireworks. Sounds a bit more poetic. It slowly opens into happy keyboards overlapped with guitar riffs that end up as a great opener for the rest of the album. It gradually fades into (most likely synthesized) organs that are almost church-worthy. It closes with overlapped vocals, choir style. However, the organization just leaves you hopeful, not bored. The rest of the album is an explosion of energy, with stadium ready power chords (Sideswipe), easily danceable headbang-able drums (Daisy), and shimmering synths (Davey Crockett). There's not much to say on the vocals. Usually the songs are simply instrumental, while others go with more choir chanting or "oh"s and "yeah"s. I found myself mentally comparing it to Anamanaguchi throughout the listening process. The album slowly changed from overpowered electro-rock to slower synth powered tunes later on in the album, but you'll hardly notice the transition.

Fang Island definitely isn't the gloomy island scene described above. It makes you think that that guy on the island is pretty lucky, and that he's probably a pretty good guy and that maybe you could be friends sometime. You'll be wanting to jump up and down and air guitar the whole time – "everyone high-fiving eachother" is definitely the exact definition. They manage to pull if off without sounding pretentious, on top of that.

If you do decided to buy it, get the AMAZONMP3 version – comes with an extra song (and not a remix at that!), and is only $6.

TRACKLISTING:
Dreams of Dreams
Careful Crossers
Daisy *
Life Coach
Sideswiper *
The Illinois
Treeton
Davey Crockett *
Welcome Wagon
Dorian
Patterns on the Wall [AMAZONMP3 Exclusive]



* = Recommended Tracks