“Cave,” the second single from Future Islands’ upcoming album The Far Field, documents what happens after the band’s given up fighting. A kind of bitter sequel to last month’s “Ran,” this song is what they sound like without the uplift: The synths weep in defeat while a frosty bassline wallows in bottomless murk. Even though Herring sings with his usual showy conviction, this time, he’s directing it toward his lack of passion: “I don’t believe anymore/Don’t believe anymore/Cuz what was gold, is gone and cold.”
That starkness is accentuated by the song’s video, which finds the perfect surrogate for Herring in another performer with a flair for overstatement: Jonathan Lamberton, the sign language interpreter whose animated translation of a New York storm warning brought him viral fame a few years back. (He made a normally dry press statement from mayor Bill De Blasio into surreal theater.) Lamberton translates the song with all the high drama it deserves, his dramatic arm sweeps conveying the emotion not only of Herring's defeated prose, but also the song’s harrowing synths and loneliness.
