Future Islands @ Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow, 30 Jul

Samuel T. Herring, the frontman of Future Islands, sings like every broken heart belongs to him. That he's felt every lyric at some point in his life; think the new pop hysterics of Billy Mackenzie, though really what he does is one-of-a-kind. Somewhere between mime, performance art, avant-garde clownery, and Ian Curtis – visceral, embodied, a near-Springsteenian melodrama. During Plastic Beach there’s tears in his eyes, as he gyrates, on the knife edge of ridiculous.

And yet, it’s affecting. When Herring isn’t yelping and sliding and sprinting and swivelling, faux-seductive and sweat-drenched by song three, motifs come through. Lots of pointing our way, then to the sky. Gestures of removing his heart, then pretending to eat it. Tracing the veins in his arms. After finishing Seasons (Waiting on You) he stares out, wide-eyed, into the “beautiful faces” (his words) of the audience, cheering for what feels like an eternity, before the band switch to the desperate cowbell-propulsive Long Flight. 

Despite this intensity, at the end of the day Herring is a crooner-poet. Throughout the whole set he has something of the cowboy, lonesome lover of the frontier about him. This is a tone which remains sustained in the band’s hearty balance of new tracks (they start with King of Sweden and The Tower) and old throwbacks (Vireo’s Eye features in the four-song encore). This is compounded by gnomic interludes between each song – tall tales that, on their surface, appear to be backstories for songs, but actually just mystify the music even further.

It’s all theatrical (shout-out to the stoic three other band members who, in contrast, dutifully play along while their frontman goes full Dionysian), which befits the venue, the seated amphitheatre of the Kelvingrove Bandstand. It’s as intimate as an outdoor gig can get. We wonder if the scale of the place is why the sound is off? The vocals remain consistently too low in the mix, like behind-the-scenes they don’t know quite what to do with a band this explosive. 

Case in point with the support act, JOON. Will her fresh take on avant-pop (think Laurie Anderson meets Italo disco), the bedroom-producer vibe of a table with laptop and cherry-red interface, malfunction at some point? It wouldn’t come as a surprise. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen; her set goes forth, glitchless, her soulful voice reminiscent of Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano. There’s detailed choreography for each track, full of yogic whacks in the air, from banger E.T. to a new (untitled) song that fits the current hip electroclash revival mould.

By the barrier, we meet Marie – western European, in a rose pattern shirt. She lets go the second JOON starts. She tells us she has been following Future Islands for the entire stretch of their Europe tour: she’s been to Barcelona, Madrid, Crystal Palace. As the sole dancer at 7pm, before the amphitheatre fills out, we wonder how she does it. Turns out, it’s pretty simple: “You have to give it your all”. Could there be a better motto for the whole evening than that?