I was looking back at some old reviews of mine of gigs by Field Music, and their various side projects by the band’s anchors David and Peter Brewis.
I was reminded that David’s Bristol gig in 2014, as part of his side project School of Language. This also featured his brother Peter and saw them be roadies as well as performers, complete in Field Music Industries overalls.
“Where’s Devo”, said someone in the crowd to much mirth from the band.
Well, a decade on and here is Devo, well only for a moment. The chunky ‘futuristic’ 80s sounding synths of the Akron, Ohio, band certainly come to mind on Six Weeks, Nine Wells, the first track of Field Music’s latest album Limits of Language.
Of course, as with their Bristol gig ten years ago, the Devo comparisons don’t last long, as this album opener moves from synth to the familiar angular pop and rock that Field Music are known from across the Sunderland band’s nine studio albums, and many extra releases and solo projects.
It’s a great start to another strong release from the band, which features another dozen or so two-to-three-minute slices of musical innovativeness.
All their influences are here on this album, Medications, Talking Heads, Prince and more as well as acts they more accidentally sound like, especially XTC, Bowie’s Low and King Crimson.
There are strong echoes of XTC’s Andy Partridge, with his mixture of jazz, pop and roll on The Guardian of Sleep, for example.
The title track is perhaps the most ‘Field Music’ here, and would not have been out of place on any of their albums from 2010’s Measure onwards. So far on early listens this is my favourite.
Another is The Waitress of St Louis. This is a perfect example of how much Field Music get into such a short time. It’s just over three minutes long, but veers this way and that, melodies come and go. It is 80s, 70s, 90s? Few bands pack as much sound and melody into just one track. Medications obviously spring to mind, and so too the Cardiacs.
Curfew in the Square wins the Phil Collins’ magic moment drum intro award and is another that relies on some sumptuous synths.
There’s plenty more to like here, including the melancholy of Turn the Hours Away and I Might Have Been Wrong.
Peter and David hope we like the record, according to their press release. We most certainly do, thank you.
They also say “as ever, we’ve done the thing we were most interested in – commercial prospects be damned” about their highly creative, albeit not hugely financially lucrative, musical career so far.
And then they sum up why they are still able to produce such great albums, “doing it like that is probably why we’re still here”, they add.
More information about the album can be found here.
By Joe Lepper
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