Future Islands brought their People Who Aren’t There Anymore Tour to the Eventim Olympia, Liverpool, on 28th June 2025, for a sold-out show that felt, from start to finish, like something to hold onto. SFN‘s Cerys Marlowe reports.
There are bands you admire, and then there are bands you feel, deeply and almost unreasonably, in your chest. Future Islands have always been the latter, and on a warm Saturday evening in Liverpool, they reminded a room full of people exactly why. The Eventim Olympia is a venue that suits them perfectly, grand enough to feel like an occasion, intimate enough to feel like a secret, and by the time the lights went down, every corner of it was packed and buzzing.
Opening the night were Sacred Paws, the Glasgow duo of guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Eilidh Rodgers, whose bright, Afropop-tinged indie pop proved an inspired warm-up choice. Drawing from both their albums, Strike a Match and the more layered Run Around the Sun, they were joyful and loose and utterly charming, filling the room with colour and rhythm and leaving the crowd far more awake than they’d found them.
But it was, of course, Future Islands who the crowd had come for, and when Samuel T. Herring took the stage, the response was enormous. He is one of the most singular frontmen in music, a fact that no amount of knowing in advance can really prepare you for when you’re in the room with him. He opened with “King of Sweden”, all propulsive synth and rumbling bass, and was already prowling the stage with that famous physical intensity, chest-beating, arms outstretched, face absolutely alive with feeling, before the first chorus had even landed.
What followed was close to two hours of pure, unguarded performance, 22 songs that pulled from every chapter of the band’s career. “The Tower” and “For Sure”, from the 2024 album People Who Aren’t There Anymore, sounded huge in the Olympia‘s rafters, the former especially carrying a kind of aching grandeur that stopped you still. Gerrit Welmers‘ synths shimmered and swelled behind everything, warm and cinematic, while William Cashion‘s bass locked in with Mike Lowry‘s drumming to create that distinctive Future Islands groove, the one that makes you want to dance and cry at the same time, often simultaneously.
The middle stretch of the set was where the evening really settled into something special. “Plastic Beach” was tender and expansive, “Ran” wound itself up slowly before releasing into something almost overwhelming, and “A Dream of You and Me” drew one of those lovely moments where the crowd seemed to collectively exhale and just lean into it, singing every word back with genuine warmth. “Peach” and “Vireo’s Eye” were given space to breathe, their quieter textures a reminder that Herring can hold a room just as well in a near-whisper as he can in full physical flight.
There was something particularly beautiful about “Long Flight” and “Tin Man” back to back, two songs that carry a kind of resigned, reaching hopefulness that feels very human, and very Future Islands. It’s the quality that has always made this band feel like more than just a very good synth-pop act, they write about love and loss and time passing in a way that lands somewhere true, and live, stripped of any distance, that truth lands harder.
“Seasons (Waiting on You)” was, as it always is, the moment the room completely let go. There is something remarkable about the way a single song can become a shared object like that, belonging somehow to everyone who has ever loved it, and hearing it in full voice at the Olympia was one of those moments you carry home with you. Herring gave it everything, moving to the barricade, reaching out to the crowd, tears and sweat indistinguishable at that point, before the band brought the set home with the lovely, gentle sway of “Little Dreamer”.
Future Islands were heading to Glastonbury the very next day, a fact that made the generosity and full-heartedness of this Liverpool show all the more striking. There was nothing held back, nothing saved, just close to two hours of complete commitment from a band that still, after nearly two decades, play as though every show might be the last time. If you get the chance to see them, you already know what to do.
Words by Cerys Marlowe.
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