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Field Music

Field Music (Measure)

Label: Memphis Industries

• MySpace
• Website

The 'indie' pigeonhole seems to follow Field Music around wherever they go, despite their best attempts to prove to anyone willing to listen that they're anything but. After a two year break, possibly taken in exasperation at the continuation of this misunderstanding, the brothers Brewis began writing again with a view to putting out another collection of Field Music material. The result is this 20 song opus, laying down a marker as to the state of their musical preferences in 2010.

From the opening cat yowl of 'In The Mirror', it's clear once again that contemporary indie is not the reference point. Single releases 'Them That Do Nothing' and 'The Rest Is Noise' sound like Paul McCartney's Wings on finest, chirpiest form, and there is plenty here, 'Each Time Is A New Time' and 'See You Later', for example, that could have sat comfortably on the track medley which makes up the second half of Abbey Road. The citing of The Beatles as an influence on their MySpace page is clearly not without grounds.

It's elsewhere, however, that the musical influences for this work can perhaps truly be found. 'Effortlessly' has a guitar break which could have come straight from Rush's A Farewell To Kings, and there are enough time signature experiments and intricate melodies to suggest that a fair share of Peter and David Brewis's record collections are given over to the genre marked 'progressive rock'.

If the laziness of comparisons to the likes of the Beach Boys and The Futureheads was ever in doubt, this album surely puts them to bed once and for all. The former presumably alludes to the heavy use of vocal harmonies, which are lush and multi-layered on much of the album, but here the rock opera of Queen would have been a more appropriate reference. With The Futureheads they share their Sunderland roots, a dislike of 4/4 time signatures, a penchant for at least three vocals and once upon a time, a drummer, but still the two bands manage to sound nothing alike. It is probably Field Music's conscious decision to eschew any sniff of a catchy melody, and The Futureheads talent for creating them, that sets the two bands apart.

Some of the most imaginative work comes with the use of strings, the pendulum violin intro and acoustic guitar melody of title track 'Measure' being a case in point and an album highlight, while 'Let's Write A Book' and the elasticated riff of 'First Comes The Wish' give a nod to both the syncopation of Yeasayer and the funky falsetto of OK Go, which is about as up to date as Field Music like to be.

A twenty track album should be unwieldy, particularly as variation is not huge, but somehow it all hangs together. Fans of prog and consciously intelligent music might love it, others will hate it. Field Music don't care. They only care about making the music they want to make. - Paddy Burke