Incoming Waves

Song Notes

Tim when asked about his favourite song from Islands said:

I love “Incoming Waves”, the very last track on the album. We don’t often play mellow, slower songs but it’s really nice live. It’s a good slow burning one. I was listening to a lot of Sigur Ros when I was writing that one actually. I liked their way they have a motif running through a song, with chord changes underneath it. So I just started with a piano line and wrote the song underneath.

Tim on the writing of the song in 2018:

I guess it’s really quite simple. It started with that keyboard motif that runs through the whole thing, and then I just made a loop of that keyboard line and started throwing chords underneath it. Eventually, I found a really nice little sequence.

I was listening to a lot of Sigur Rós at the time, and I liked how they would have a keyboard motif going - I figured out it would repeat through the whole thing. I was trying to do something similar to them. And then the chords came under and they were quite nice.

The place I was staying was really close to this nice graveyard that looked out over the ocean, and it’s actually where Robert Graves is buried, so, “Great day for walking among the graves” has a double meaning, like Robert Graves’ grave is right there. It’s just perched on top of this mountaintop looking out across the ocean, and at sunset, the sun is directly west looking out, and west is towards New York where I live. I was thinking of that, really.

The track was debuted live at the Mercury Lounge in New York on September 14th 2018 during the bands US Islands tour.