Quantity and Quality In Equal Measure : Field Music (Measure) by Field Music

(This artcile first appeared on www.twistedear.com in 2010)

Field Music have carved for themselves a nice little niche – crafted, melodic, angular yet comfortable, quintessentially English pop music with a couple of toes dipped in the post-punk of Wire and XTC. And with a niche can come an overdose of that comfort, a treading of water, a blunting of the edge that gave a band their identity in the first place. Perhaps the solo work of the Brewis brothers has both informed and inspired them, as they have returned from their three year Field Music hiatus and have delivered something much more than we’ve ever had from them before.

They are still the band we know from previous releases – Effortlessly could have found a place on any of their other work - but have also returned more varied and freer, enveloping a myriad of new styles, owning them all and never seeming like genre tourists, infusing their signature sound with these breaths of new, different air.

Most notably there is a more rockier sound, catching on the coat tails of classic rifferama as evidenced by opener In The Mirror, or by Each Time Is A New Time (with squirts of funky wah-wah interspersed into the Zep-lite mix), Clear Water (a languid bluesy number), The Rest Is Noise and Something Familiar (evoking their 70’s side, as per the spirit of Mac, 10cc) and All You’d Ever Need To Say; yet there are so many more alleyways and avenues explored, all coalescing to create a fantastic, engaging, elegantly satisfying whole. Putting one foot on the power pedal certainly hasn’t meant taking their attention from crafting wonderful melodies and sumptuous arrangements, and going out to places probably very few bands from Sunderland have gone before.

Them That Do Nothing for example is a rubbery acoustic guitar driven meditiation on the impotence of inertia, on how ‘Them that do nothing make no mistakes’. You And I is built on a plaintive, plangent guitar figure which evolves into a smoky, passionate close. Curves Of The Needle opens with a piano intro and understated vocal, and grows into Let It Be-era Beatles type slow jam. The title track offers strings which arrive see sawing across each other, mixing with rolling drums, bendy bass and delicate acoustic guitar ; it’s almost epic if it all wasn’t done in such a wonderfully understated, controlled way. See You Later is largely instrumental, clipped riffage but gives way to dolelful paino and vocal. It’s all fabulous - and then they get funky!!!

Let’s Write A Book comes straight outta…..well, Midnite Vultures era Beck, but it’s still more funky than some blokes from Sunderland have any right to be ; scattergun rhythms, wah wah guitar slinking in the background, alternating gentle swathes of keyboards and prog-jazz synth solos jousting with xylophones. Handled by men who know what they’re doing, they’re not playing games. Share The Words funks as if the Blockheads gate crashed one of the parties Chic would have when they didn’t get into Studio 54.

And the there’s Precious Plans – a major standout – which fades in a cyclical Drake/Martyn guitar figure, all unassuming, with the usual gorgeous vocal harmonising, and blends in to string counterpoints and closes with a dash of strident drumming. Utterly wonderful. The record closes with It’s About Time, a just shy of ten minute instrumental mixture of riffs and avant-orchestral sound collages. Hey, after the last 19 tracks, they can do what the fuck they like, I’m not bothered.

So, there’s lots to get through in these 20 tracks, but with the quality in them, you’re never disappointed ; and given the lack of theme or concept, you can quite easily dip in and out if you don’t always want to consume it whole – not that I want to pander to the selective downloading culture that is slowly killing the album as a concept, you should own and experience this record as a whole first. Them that do what they want to do, make very few mistakes.