Field Music
Tones of Town
Memphis Industries, 2007
By Allana Mayer
It’s a good thing the best-of-2007 listing season is far and away, because I’d have deliberated on my choices for much longer had Field Music been on my radar at the time. Tones of Town is so effortlessly enjoyable I won’t even bother calling it a guilty pleasure. And yeah, about a minute into the first track I laughed out loud and double-checked what I was listening to: did this really come out last year?
The ’80s pop vocals and that little guitar bit in the opening track are completely Queen and totally indulgent. You’ve got your Brit references at the ready: “Where’s my Beach Boys ripoff beat? Where’s that Kinks riff?” And you’ll find them, if you look hard enough. Each song has a unique “where have I heard that before?”, but only a bit. It’s a send-up that’s nevertheless original, and packing so many of those moments into one album is alone worthy of commendation.
It actually fucks with your sense of what’s right, because instead of the usual 2 or 3 “oh, I love this song!” intros per album, you find yourself doing it for each track. It’s probably because each song is only two minutes long, like the frenetic composers could just barely get each motif out before the next one took up all their attention.
Second track “Sit Tight” has a rhythm that reminds me of The Coral’s “Dreaming of You,” but the end breaks into a combo of keys, humming, and some minor beatboxing that is deserving of nothing but a “yessssssssss”. “Working to Work” plays with pleasing harmonies, empty spaces, and educated dynamics: control is tight here. “In Context,” I’ll admit, reminds me of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but only their good work (i.e. “The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth”), and has a rhythm that makes me want to jerk spasmodically – oh, wait, I mean dance. Its sexy crescendos and totally delicious guitars make it stand out on the album, but only just. “A Gap Has Appeared” has odd, melodramatic strings, and is lush like an Arcade Fire release, but better, because it’s not Arcade Fire. The consistent clarity and diversity (you can have consistent diversity, right?) of Tones of Town … well, I’m trying really hard not to use the word “genius” here, but what the hell. It’s genius.
Okay, time for some backstory. Brothers David and Peter Brewis and their pal Andrew Moore got together in 2003 and released two LPs and a b-sides collection. In 2007 they decided to split up after the promo tour for Tones of Town was finished, but not really. A lot of blather and misquotations and clarifications later, the members of Field Music say they’re dissatisfied with the life of an indie band, and while they want to keep making music, the format in which they were doing it with Field Music wasn’t their idea of a good time. In so many words.
Intersecting bands include Maximo Park and the Futureheads, but I wouldn’t compare the sounds. And yes, one of the Brewis brothers has resurfaced already, in the form of School of Language, so all is not lost. But even those releases don’t hold a candle to this. Let’s hope that “Field Music The Company” comes around sooner or later, to pick up where “Field Music The Band” left off.
