Live Music: Future Islands at Vicar Street

Anyone who enjoys rooting for the underdog will find Future Islands hard to resist. 

Led by a balding 30-something whose stage routine involves lurching back and forth like someone’s dad at a wedding, and staffed by a rag-tag of geeks and droopy mustachioed outsiders, the band have become unlikely mainstream heroes — thanks, in large part, to a meme-generating turn on David Letterman’s show this year.

In the spot — since viewed millions of times on YouTube — the North Carolina group performed their single, ‘Seasons’, as if their lives, careers and the wellbeing of family and pets depended on it. Wobbling, waggling, practically turning handstands, frontman Samuel Herring was both charismatic and ridiculous — an irresistible formula when paired with the band’s often wistful music (the wailing synths imbue his prat-falling with a sad, poetic quality).