Press:

“Stand out tracks: EVERY FUCKING ONE! But if you hear only one make it "Life Coach." The vocal harmonies will make you invincible.”
Circuit Sweet - Top 10 albums of 2010

“Its rambunctious nature is just what’ll grab your attention. If you let yourself have a moment to absorb the dense melodies and charming heart-on-the-sleeve quasi-choral arrangements, it may just infect you more so than any of those records that already have a million verbose blog posts written about them.”
The Best of 2010 / #1 - Audio Suede

“Fang Island brought a much needed hard edge to 2010′s rather delicate and understated musical output. Pairing some of the most infectious guitar riffs of the year with hymn-like vocal chants, tracks like “Daisy” and “Sidesweeper” hit nostalgic chords for those of us who grew up in the 90s. It’s as epically shredded as it is endlessly playable, smothered by the optimism of youth and the promise of the coming century.”
Top 10 Albums of 2010 - I guess I'm Floating

“I think Fang Island might have saved us. Given us that sunshine succour that washes away all the shame. The grit and grime and grief of this treacherous season and replaced it with a glory. An ode to joy with choruses wide as the summer sea and moments that warm us like the hidden kiss of young lovers in spring.”
Top 25 Albums of 2010 - Pinpoint Music

“The energy in this music is so deeply rooted it makes me want to shout along with every deconstructed vocal line. The album starts with firecrackers for God sakes! It's the busiest album I've ever heard that doesn't sound the least bit cluttered.”
Fang Island Review - Beats After Treble Clefs

“If this is the arena rock of the future, send me an invite, okay?”
Pitchfork

“it’s not everyday you hear a band that just, well, rocks. Everything about Fang Island is grandiose. To use the term “arena rock” would be an understatement. Then I found out that the group was from Rhode Island, and I thought to myself, “well, maybe they’re compensating for something.” That might just be why a band from the smallest state in the US has somehow produced the largest sound I have heard in ages.”
Fang Island S/T Review - The Needle & The Groove

“Fang Island was huge anthemic rock with five members on stage playing guitars, and sharing vocal duties seemingly equally. The songs were epic and really well crafted, with that kind of guitar sound that always makes me think of 1970s stadium rock but still very much a part of the indie pop rock world, in the degree of immediacy and accessibility. It’s unashamed unabashed feel good rock.”
Live Review July 11, 2010 - Green Shoe Lace

“Fang Island have created a euphoric and exuberant album which blurs the line between anthemic rock, prog and electronica. It sounds like they had a damn good time creating this record as it's so joyous, it really does make you want to run down the street high fiving people as you go.”
Fang Island Album Review - NARC. Magazine UK

“The overall effect is of a band managing to cross 70's YES and Queen with a Post-punk sensibility, essentially like nothing else around.”
Fang Island Album Review - Uncut Magazine UK

“Fang Island manage to capture all the thrills of their chosen genre of inspiration (listen to this alongside Thin Lizzy's greatest hits and it won't sound too shabby). Even more so than these two acts, they also manage to add a new layer to their source material, producing uplifting, anthemic classic-influenced rock with a totally modern sensibility. Listen to this as an antidote to everything hesitant, tentative, and scared this summer and have shit tons of fun.”
Fang Island Album Review - Rock Sound - UK

“Basically what we're dealing with here is a sort of joyous, unstructured, psych-damaged post-classic rock. It's as if this band have managed to take a Journey or Thin Lizzy solo, stretch it out to album length, and somehow gotten away with it. This album is eminently listenable, refreshing, layered, and at absolutely no point does it feel like a guilty pleasure.”
Fang Island Album Review - Drowned In Sound - UK

“Fang Island ebbs and flows as a continuous piece throughout its euphoric half-hour, demonstrating that for all its spontaneous sound and carefree attitude, there has been a helluva lot of thought and care taken in putting the record together. This LP is a triumph, and the kind of record that bedroom rock-outs were invented for.”
Fang Island Album Review - The Line Of Best Fit

“Fang Island aren’t just about wailing on their fret boards à la instrumetalists Fucking Champs. “Daisy” definitely chugs away, but the climax has a release as cathartic as the Arcade Fire’s entire catalogue. “Life Coach” has the bumping rhythm of your standard Animal Collective song, though loading up on a blast of riff-roaring guitars instead of synths’n’samplers. And “Davy Crockett” floats with an intergalactic transcendence like Spiritualized’s Pure Phase, slowly building up to a loud peal of uplifting chants.”
Fang Island Album Review - Much Music

“Fang Island has that never-ending feeling of elation. Credit the three-man “guitarmy” of Jason Bartell, Chris Georges and Nick Sadler, whose Brian May-inspired recipe of harmonic riffage unleashes a mighty wave of euphoria.”
Fang Island Album Review - Much Music

“I get totally euphoric when I hear a band that isn't trying to sound like anyone else. A band that are playing for themselves if you will. Damn the torpedoes and all that jazz. If it weren't for bands like Fang Island then music would just stand still and stagnate instead of innovate.”
Fang Island Album Review - UberRock UK

“A joyous, jangling lo fidelity mess of riffs and shout-along choruses that bypasses lazy shitgaze and no-fi pigeonholing simply by sounding like it's having ten times too much fun to be bothered with a bunch of boring crap that doesn't really mean anything anyway”
Fang Island Album Review - Vice Magazine

“This is a truly brilliant album. Something we feel like we've been waiting our whole lives to hear. Unashamedly camp, riff based, prancing prog music. Not sweaty noodle prog though, rather think King Crimson,Pink Floyd's The Wall, Queen, Gong, and even the glam of T-Rex. I'm so sincere about this I just compared them to my favorite band of all time!”
Fang Island Album Review - Electric Ghosts

“It's like arena rock for people who hate arena rock, though theirs absolutely no malice in the vicinity, as these guys are the most positive sounding bunch you'll ever hear.”
Fang Island Album Review - Rocksound

“Fang Island are simply killer fun, a proper gang who sing collectively and pummel their guitars without recourse to errant soloing.”
Fang Island Album Review - MOJO Magazine

“you know how most bands have that one epic song? Fang Island took that idea and ran. Freakin’ sprinted baby. Instead of just writing one, grandiose, lead guitar riddled, over-the-top, barn burning anthem, they wrote an entire sets worth. Completely infectious. At certain points I closed my eyes and just listened. Felt like chasing down some dreams, or maybe throwing a few high fives.”
Live Review Chicago - VEOBA

“In all seriousness there is nothing out there like this. It’s inspirational in its scope but never over the top. Well, perhaps the classic rock guitar heroics during ‘Davey Crockett’ are just a little shall we say exuberant but on the whole the means justifies the ends. Fang Island have produced a stunning debut here and one that leaves you with a massive grin on your face.”
Fang Island Album Review - Pennyblack Music UK

“Fang Island is an album about youth, that sounds very current, and I connect with it because the energy is real, the passion is true, and the motive is so well-meaning.”
Fang Island Album Review - Black Powder Smoke

“Hmmm, a loud, powerful, in-your-face rock group out of Providence, Rhode Island? Lightning Bolt is another band that perfectly fits that description, and they are capable of giving your eardrums plenty of damage as well. I said before that the guitars are a little reminiscent of Ratatat, so think of this band as a cross between Lightning Bolt and Ratatat, as weird as that may sound, an experiment gone horribly right.”
Fang Island Album Review - Hipster Garbage Canada

“The one problem with posting a Fang Island track is that it’s hard to pick which one to post - the entire album is, essentially, one uninterrupted stream of awesomeness and badassery.”
Track Feature - Let's Talk About Music

“Imagine you're 15 years old. You and your best friend have just gotten stoned for the first time, you're laying around his rec room. Your shoes are off, the sun is shining through the windows, you're listening to metal albums. You start to notice that in every song there's that one part: The Awesome Part. The music accelerates, or crescendos, or shifts suddenly, and you look at each other and say, "That. Was. Awesome." Then, because you're stoned, you vow to some day make an album of all awesome parts. Just awesome parts, strung together by mad kickassology scientists into a tapestry of pure ***ing awesomeness! Then you go back to munching on Cheez-Its. Except these five guys from Rhode Island went and did it.”
Fang Island Album Review - Grist.Org

“How to describe Fang Island … Imagine a world where Michael Cera plays the role of underdog boxer Rocky Balboa. Now, replace all those Survivor tracks with music by Fang Island. The music is both epic and indie. It alternately makes me want to run and draw pictures of unicorns.”
Fang Island Album Review - The Roundtable

“Live, Fang Island’s three guitars are crisper, the vocals more apparent, and the drumming more aggressive. The group’s rather lo-fi sounding recorded material pales in comparison to the band onstage, and seeing each musician shred on his respective instrument makes it easy to see what a talented bunch of instrumentalists they are.”
Live Review San Francisco - Jambase

“Incorporating heavy rock, psychedelic and folk all with superbly celebratory and melodic flavor, Fang Island’s debut full length has potential for a serious following. The band that describes their sound as “everyone high-fiving everyone” is spot on in their self-reflection. This record not only invokes feelings of glory but caters to all those who look forward to rocking out.”
Fang Island Review - KEXP 90.3 Seattle

“They have managed to fit more over the top and awesome guitar riffs and organ solos into a fairly short album than any I have heard in some time.”
Fang Island Review - DBF Music

“Combining the production quality of stereo blistering pop rock and pleasant choral nature of folk vocals, Fang Island achieves a brilliant juxtaposition. Guitars power through pop riffs and massive hits, changing motifs every few bars but always staying focused.”
Fang Island Review - KEXP 90.3 Seattle

“They are confident in their music; perhaps the most refreshing things about Fang Island is their dedication to bringing that music alive, eschewing the showmanship that often plagues young bands on the verge of “making it.” There are no antics”
Live Review Maxwells 4/2010 - Melophobe

“The band's three guitar players all know how to play – a welcome change to a lot of recent noise rock bands that pride themselves on uneducated guitarists who think the more unrefined sound their guitar makes, the better”
Live Review San Francisco - Jambase

“Fang Island must be loud. It must be big and bold and it's at that very moment when they exceed beyond instruments and words. It becomes something capable of altering moods, of changing weather and clearing dark clouds completely away and out of the forecast.”
Fang Island Review - Daytrotter

“In a modern landscape of music where much un-hip 80s territory is being mined for updated musical gold, this is another great example of a band taking some killer ideas and bringing them to the masses in an updated, better and more interesting and developed form. Because sometimes you just have to high-five EVERYONE, and Fang Island proves it to you throughout this record.”
Fang Island Review - DBF Music

“There is not a shred of pretension in any of the band’s five members. At risk of sounding overly effusive, they are a breath of fresh air in an indie rock scene that often reeks with the stale smell of holier than thou bands obsessing over soundchecks in fifty person venues.”
Live Review Maxwells 4/2010 - Melophobe

“Fang Island have honed their musical alchemy to yield a ridiculously infectious brand of stadium rock that feels like it should be blasting around a bonfire the size of the Grand Canyon, populated by teaming throngs of Queen- and Modest Mouse-loving Boston/Animal Collective babies.”
Fang Island Album Review - Exclaim Canada

“The album is 80% guitar solos and drum fills and pretty much the only time there's singing, it's in the form of beautiful, soaring four part harmonies. It's just soundtrack music to doing fucking kick ass at life. Every song sounds like it was written to congratulate everyone for the previous song.”
Fang Island Album Review - Antilogy Design

“Listening to Fang Island is like eating a giant, mixing-bowl size serving of the most decadent ice cream conceived by man. No indulgence is spared, no whim not exercised. This record is everything that your 15 year old mind wanted in rock music: guitar solos so intricate and catchy that they could be used to wrangle and tame Dinosaurs played at speeds so blazing that it could only be preformed by some kind of human-robot hybrid from the future, returning to our own time to teach us how to love.”
Fang Island Album Review - Left Of The Dial

“This music is just honest and life-affirming and infectious, and it's that rare concentration of directness and simplicity that makes Fang Island so uniquely and wonderfully inclusive.”
Best New Music Album Review - Pitchfork

“It's the kind of music that would be a sensible soundtrack to a lightsaber-wielding Jesus riding a rocket-powered unicorn to high-five the moon and shotgun beers with space hobbits before travelling through time to drop acid with a nudist colony from the '70s.”
Fang Island Album Review - Exclaim Canada

“These guys can stun you with huge and spot-on vocal harmonies, or they can barrel you over with their tight guitar heroics -- they do both in spades here.”
Fang Island Album Review - Pop Matters

“Did you ever like pro-wrestling? Ever? Did you ever want to be a firetruck or a spaceship when you grew up? Do you like roller coasters, summer time, playing wiffle ball or jumping off a high ledge on to a trampoline, only to bounce into a big warm lake with all of your friends from grade school? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, Fang Island is required listening.”
Fang Island Album Review - Left Of The Dial

“play it loud and play it proud, Fang Island is one of the most vibrant and exciting releases of 2010.”
Fang Island Review - Ductastic

“We weren't sure how to label this furious melee of folky, chanted unison warbles and epic instrumental passages, this mad cross-breed of serious intensity and joyous release. Good on them for making sure their frenzied musicianship didn't detract from the manic exuberance. It's like some crazy jam session between Fairport Convention and Faith No More, or between the Incredible String Band and Deep Purple as conducted by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.”
Band Of The Day Feature - The Guardian UK

“Fang Island sounds like a metal band that decided to play the entire score to a fictional Sega Genesis game that I wish existed. Never before have guitars and keyboards come together so beautifully to slam-fuck your ears.”
Fang Island Album Review - Left Of The Dial

“Fang Island has claimed that their goal is to write music for people that love music, and make no mistake that this album is absolutely music nerd catnip. But what's most impressive is not that they've followed through with their goal, but that they've managed to do so without making an album that is ever pretentious or exclusive. Instead they've just made an album that should make every music lover smile.”
Fang Island Album Review - The Ignatius Record Review

“These Brooklyn kids play a sort of of noise-math rock in the vein of Hella, with a chaotic innocence that recalls the Mae She. Its infectious, its loud, its awesome. I honestly don't think I've listened to something that felt this honest and strangely fun since I first heard Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.”
Fang Island Album Review - Cheetah Love

“Fang Island is getting a ton of hype lately. And they totally deserve it. They are straight-up pleasant rock and roll with excellent melodies and some pretty wild solos. And they have a really nice-looking website.”
Dawn Recorder Org

“The Most Popular SXSW Music Acts by Social Media Buzz holding court at the number-one spot, Fang Island”
SXSW 2010 - Mashable

“Fang Island is a blueprint for how to do bombastic rock right. There are layers of guitars and extended solos galore, accompanied by crazy drum fills and loud crescendos.”
Fang Island Album Review - The Georgetown Voice

“it's like free-basing unicorns”
@P_dubs - Best Tweet Ever

“I think my reaction to Fang Island is similar to what most people get from The Arcade Fire: incredible, stunningly crafted music with original, powerful instrumentals and hauntingly beautiful vocal harmonies. Except that Fang Island does it better.”
Fang Island Album Review - Behind The Hype

“Fang Island is a band that redefines everything you have ever heard about music in your life. The band utilizes three guitarists that cause awe with their technical skills over their harmonious melodies. Their performance was flawless and only left me yearning for more. Of every band I saw at SXSW this year, I am telling you that you need to hear Fang Island.”
SXSW Show Review - The University Star

“Fang Island have released a great album and look poised to make 2010 their bitch when it's all said and done.”
Life Coach Video Review - I Guess I'm Floating

“Imagine if Dan Deacon and the Hold Steady teamed up to write a self-help rock album. It would probably sound a lot like this. Easily one of the best records of 2010 so far.”
J Jaques - Album Review - Questionable Content

“What helps Fang Island steamroll past cynicism is how "fun" isn't just an ornament for them, it's embedded in the band's musical DNA.”
Best New Music Album Review - Pitchfork

“Arguably the first sleeper hit of the year, “Fang Island” takes everything right about The Postal Service and Japandroids and smashes it together into one; is that not a recipe for an awesome sandwich with a side of hipster?”
CD Review - Fang Island - Apples & VCRs

“no other band at SXSW commanded the attention that Fang Island did. Sure, the music was loud (about as loud as a shotgun fired next to your ear) but these guys are clear performers. The three guitarists (one dressed up as a wizard) worked the showstopper dynamic all night long.”
SXSW Live Review - I Guess I'm Floating

“Fang Island is all about god guitar solos, riffs of the gods and hooks that pummel you over the head for maximum impact. In other words, Fang Island are musos it's ok to like.”
Fang Island Album Review - The POP! Stereo

“Sideswiper” is the audio version of a moonbounce/ball-pit full of large, fluffy bunny rabbits. Outside of the moonbounce/ball-pit, multi-colored grizzly bears stand guard and laugh hysterically as a million toddlers dance and squeal with joy.”
Track Review Sideswiper - Teenage Geriatric

“Fang Island has three guitarists, probably the reason why the guitar work on this album is so powerful and layered. All three of them do a marvelous job creating a thick, atmospheric sound for the record, while occasionally busting out a solo that only makes things that much more epic (and I hate that word, I just can’t think of an alternative that does it justice).”
Fang Island Album Review - Behind The Hype

“But is such talent enough to say the group’s record is one of the best so far to be introduced in 2010? In this case, believe the hype.”
CD Review - Fang Island - Blare Magazine

“Fang Island manages to pull off all the pomp and melodrama in all its self-indulgences without stifling the listener with an over-bloated image of itself. And it may be the band’s technical prowess that inevitably allows it to do so. Frankly, with all the tremolo picking and delicious hard rock riffage captured in the record’s brief 30 minutes, it’s hard not to believe them initially when the “oooooohh-aaaaaahh-ooooohh” chorus practically screams at you “We’re the best band in the world.””
Fang Island Album Review - Avery Island

“One listen to Fang Island’s new release will destroy everything you’ve known about music for a quick period of time because of it’s abstract construction and sound. A second listen will open your eyes and make you realize why music admirers are constantly spinning the Brooklyn quintet’s cd”
CD Review - Fang Island - Blare Magazine

“We get a lot of crap CDs at the self-titled offices. But once in a while, a pleasant surprise slips into our promo stack. Here’s a recent delivery that knocked the S/T staff on its collective ass.”
CD Review - Fang Island - Self-Titled

“The Brooklyn quintet marries complex math-rock with a life-affirming energy that could soundtrack the next Spike Jonze film.”
CD Review - Fang Island - The Examiner

“Fang Island is fuelled by a band whose talents are channeled into creating music that bursts at the seams with a tremendous sense of positivity.”
Review - Self Titled - Sputnik Music

“Fang Island have much to celebrate. Successfully combining the luster of indie pop music with the technical eccentricities of progressive rock is no small feat, but the band has proven to do it with style and grace.”
CD Review - Fang Island - Decoy Music

“Fang Island has created a 30 minute sonic journey of positivity and inspiration. Imagine winning the lottery…your first kiss…having all your dreams come true. If your life were made into a movie, Fang Island would be playing very prominently in the background during all of those moments.”
CD Review - Fang Island - Positivexposure

“I've been looking for something new to become completely, utterly, intoxicatedly obsessed with this month and I've found it in about thirty-two different shades of awesome with Fang Island's self-titled sophomore LP.”
CD Review - Fang Island - I Guess I'm Floating

“Whatever it is that’s inspired so much joy in their music, I hope it continues. In this era of darkly clad, angsty teens, Harley-buying midlife crisis fathers, and pill-popping, lonely housewives, it’s time to skip the Prozac; Fang Island will brighten your day.”
Review - Self Titled - Sputnik Music

“The band set off with the aspirations of recording music people can feel good about, and do so with luscious harmonies, vivid angular guitar arrangements, and blast beat drumming forming a complex but uplifting ambiance.”
CD Review - Fang Island - Exploding In Sound

“Totally triumphant guitars, giant choruses, and an overload of positive charm made this a perfect summertime album. I stand by my prediction: when this thing finally gets released, it’s going to be huge.”
Brian Cook - The Stranger - Line Out - Seattle

“Fang Island are prepared to make an impact on the industry this year,with their notorious blend of progressive musicianship, overwhelming doses of optimistic pop, math rock inspired rhythms, and heavenly chants.”
Review - Fang Island - Decoy Music

“This is an incredibly strong début from a band that will hopefully set the course for 2010. I’m easily predicting that Fang Island will be on my ‘best of 2010’ list,”
CD Review - Fang Island - Positivexposure

“Brooklyn quintet Fang Island has created a 30 minute sonic journey of positivity and inspiration”
CD Review - Fang Island - Positivexposure

“With their sprawling guitars, chants and hollers, Fang Island are here to warm our hearts and melt our minds.”
Bands To Watch in 2010 - The 405 UK

“like the music in your head at that moment when everything feels just right: that first kiss, that high score on the video game, buying your first small nation in cash… you know, good stuff.”
The Rad Report

“Any band that plays a show in a nursery school and posts the footage of kids getting down to their angular, breakdown driven alt-rock deserves at least a modicum of success. Any band that describes their sound as 'everyone high-fiving everyone' deserves to be huge.”
Rock Sound

“Amidst a flurry of time signature changes, we're treated to a brainy vision of pop-punk”
Pitchfork

“I don't want to like Sky Gardens, as it offends my cranky New England sensibilities, but I can't help myself. I'm listening to it right now and I feel compelled to do better.”
EP Review - Skyscraper

“Someone needs to invent the posi-Olympics and hire Fang Island to soundtrack it. For reals. This three-song EP is, quite seriously, good will and positive thinking transformed into a three guitar instrumental attack.”
EP Review - Skyscraper

“You feel like you're listening to a band, not an overproduced monster. The occasional vocal chants are fun, and there's just the right amount of them. I've seen great footage of the band performing for a class of kindergartners,I wish I had that type of religious experience at 5”
Day Of The Great Leap Review - Giant Robot

“Usually a band can't possibly live up to an epic name like Fang Island, but this band is amazing, and plays mostly instrumental rock anthems that touch on almost every genre. punk, pop, rock, math-it's all in here. The execution is tight, the energy is maxed out, and the pace goes up and down.”
Day Of The Great Leap Review - Giant Robot