Future Islands, from left: William Cashion, Samuel T. Herring, Gerrit Welmers. Photo by Timothy Saccenti.

To quote pop music’s foremost egotist, Samuel T. Herring has played the underdog his whole career. Future Islands' last two albums, In Evening Air and On the Water were beloved by a devout few, but largely overlooked, and in most of the Baltimore band's songs, frontman Herring taps a bottomless reserve of resilience in the face of constant romantic failure, burnout, and disappointment. Their live show really confirms this image, lending a performative, wish-fulfillment element: When you finally see the man behind the unhinged, highly theatrical voice, he looks like the guy picking onions next to you at Trader Joe’s. Sporting a receding hairline and a neatly tucked T-shirt and jeans, Herring stalks the stage in front of his equally unassuming band members J. Gerrit Welmers and William Cashion, intensely glaring at you like you’re the only person in the audience, which is the entire point. “I physically work hard on stage to get mouths to drop, bring people in, and to catch them off guard," says the singer. "We come out and people don't really know what to expect—and then we launch into this big music.”

And now they're in a position where big things are expected of their fourth album, Singles, moving from the modest, revered Chicago imprint Thrill Jockey to indie powerhouse 4AD, which currently houses A-listers including the National, Deerhunter, and Grimes. The trio, who have been writing music together for more than 10 years, recorded Singles on their own dime and brought in producer Chris Coady, who's worked with TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Grizzly Bear, and fellow Baltimoreans Beach House. They play Coachella for the first time in April and they’ve even supplemented their unorthodox vocals-bass-sequencer setup with a live drummer, Denny Bowen, from defunct Charm City noiseniks Double Dagger.

With Singles due out March 25, Future Islands are caught in a situation that most bands aspire towards but rarely talk about in plain terms: That point where you’re on the verge of playing to 1000 people instead of 350, where the TV appearances are expected rather than a nice surprise. "We haven't been working hard for years and years so that we could not do the big things," says Herring. As such, they’re thinking like careerists—a term that typically engenders a lot of ill will, as if bands shouldn’t be practical about their own livelihoods. 

The negative connotation is not lost on Herring: “As music becomes a career more than a hobby, you have to respect that it is work and people count on you. I'm not just talking about it from a business standpoint, but fans want to hear what you're working on.” So this time out, he's thinking like an alpha dog instead of an underdog. While the band agrees that the title Singles can be open to interpretation, Herring boasts, “For me, it's a confident, arrogant title. Every single song's a single and can stand along on its own.” 

Pitchfork: Considering the new label and the bigger stages, did you feel more pressure while you were making this new album or now that it’s done?

Samuel T. Herring: We didn't get the 4AD deal until the record was mixed and mastered a couple of months ago. We created it completely out of our pocket and the pockets of friends who helped out because we were running low on dough. We basically put all of our marbles in the pot and hoped for the best. So there was pressure going into the recording, but afterwards, I wasn't really concerned, because we created a great piece of work, the next evolution of what we've done for years. I just feel excitement now. I just want the stage. I'm ready to hit the road hard, hit the big stages, hit the small stages, the houses.

Pitchfork: Especially compared to On the Water, this album sounds more uptempo and focused on big choruses. Were you intent on making a “pop” record to fit your ambitions?

SH: We consider what we do to be pop music. It's our own twist on it, but we've always written songs about love and loss and nature, just real things—universal music that’s catchy and has strong chords. I definitely wanted to revitalize the live set, so there's some 80s R&B and punk influences on there, but the album also has some of those slow bangers that define our band.

Pitchfork: Singles sounds like it’s coming from a much more romantically satisfied place than In Evening Air and On the Water—were you becoming aware of Future Islands as having a reputation for making “breakup records”?

SH: Having a reputation for writing breakup records is OK for me. I don't have someone in my life right now, but I'm also just becoming a mature adult. When I was 18 on a college campus, an old curmudgeon came up to me in the park and told me that he wanted to see what I was writing. We shared a cigarette, and he just started making fun of me. He was a poetry major. He was probably about my age now—late 20s/early 30s—and he was just like, "This is all bullshit, one day you're going to be a cynical asshole just like me." I still don't want to become that. I want to hold on to those romantic ideals. Those are things that we believe in and work hard on in our music.