#365songs (97 / 365)

Islands had a lot of good songs on their first album Return to the Sea but this first track was both a gutsy way to start the album and one of the best. It's also an elegy of sorts for singer Nick Diamonds' previous band the Unicorns (well-beloved in their own right); though I didn't know anything about them when I first heard this album, a 9-minute track is a good way to pique my curiosity. It's the myth-making thing I love so much.

Compared to the Unicorns, "Swans" sounds clean and slickly produced, but by any other standard it's charmingly rough-edged. It's got a very classic long song build-to-a-guitar-solo arc to it, but the double-tracked vocals are scrappy and uneven, and it's got enough hooks start-to-finish that those 9 minutes fly by. And the drums and bass are great. And I only now, in 2026, read that it has Spencer Krug on piano? Seriously?