Almost immediately after their last album, ‘Tones of Town’ was released, Sunderland band Field Music put themselves on an indefinite hiatus, partly because they were skint, and partly because they wanted to get away from the pressure of trying to compete as an “indie” band. As they said in my interview with them, “The thing with the new record is we had an idea like, how can we redefine Field Music and still not feel like we’re in that competition. Because if we were in that competition we’d probably be sort of like in the 3rd division or something like that, 3rd rate. And we kinda thought, like, well, lets make a double album! An album that’s too long.”

At twenty songs, ‘Field Music (Measure)’ is certainly long, but it doesn’t feel too long and there are no “weak link” songs that could be taken from the album without depriving the listener of something really special. It often seems that the best music comes from a sense of freedom and experimentation, when bands really allow themselves to pursue their vision without worrying about anything else. Their press release for the album says “Unlike previous Field Music albums, characterised by their precision and conceptual and sonic coherence, this new record makes no attempt to present itself as a unified whole.” The songs don’t all go together, but they are unified by the fact that they are all distinctly Field Music songs. By not constraining themselves to as many self-imposed rules as in the past, the Brewis brothers have created an album of twenty individually genius songs.

Trying to condense all of these songs into one summarized review would do a disservice to the album, so instead I’m treating you to a track-by-track breakdown (below the cut).

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As promised, here’s the second half of the interview with David and Peter Brewis of Field Music after their gig in Brooklyn on 30 January 2010. In this half, we discuss topics as diverse as their musical influences, music history, music piracy, “staycations” and the future of the band – aren’t you glad you came back?

Note: The audio of this interview is located below. The transcript is included below and after the cut. Descriptions of what is happening have been placed between asterisks, i.e. “*Peter enters the room*”

MP3: Field Music Interview – Part 2

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Well, to me at least, you seem to have a very unique sound. So are there bands that you listen to that influence you?

Peter: Thank you very much! Oh, yeah, yeah…

And what are some of those bands?

Peter: Contemporary bands?

Whatever.

Peter: Beatles, Roxy Music, the Band, Fleetwood Mac, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush…

David: Thelonious Monk hugely for me, in terms of what he does with melodies.

Peter: And Duke Ellington in terms of arrangement. Béla Bartók. Stravinsky. And really, Beethoven as well, but that goes without saying. Bach. Erm, Prince?

David: On the new album there’s loads of things where I’ve been “inspired” (in quotation marks) by David Bowie, i.e. I’ve stolen things from him or I’ve done a song and thought “I should do this in the style of David Bowie”.

Peter: Peter Green[of Fleetwood Mac], Eric Clapton…

David: He’s gonna list all of the different guitarists…Deerhoof, for me, Fiery Furnaces. Not in, not so much that I would take ideas from them, just that I’m like jealous of some of the things that they do.

Peter: I mean, everything that’s good. The thing about music is, that, it’s really, what’s the word, it creates dichotomies.

David: But we’re in an era which should embrace the dichotomy.

Peter: Absolutely, absolutely.

David: [whispers] Sorry!

Peter: You hear something, and you take the things that you want from it, and you edit out the things that you don’t want.

Pick and choose.

Peter: So for us, any bit of music that you hear, it might be something that I don’t really like at all, however, it might just be that we edit ourselves so that whatever happens we don’t do that.

Peter: We used to do that when we were very young. Well, not very young, like 23 year-olds, we used to write manifestos, and things that we weren’t allowed to do. Like I don’t know if you know the Futureheads…

Yeah, yeah.

Peter: They’re a Sunderland band. When we were very young, me, David and Baz and Ross and Jaff from the Futureheads, we used to write, basically, these art manifestos and things we weren’t allowed to do in the band. We weren’t allowed to cross our hands not matter what, so even if you were a drummer, you weren’t allowed to cross your hands, you had to like [mimes rotating in seat without moving his arms].

That’s a bit ridiculous.

Peter: Well it is ridiculous, it is ridiculous. BUT, it’s a process, it’s a boundary in which you can do anything that you want, within that little frame. I find that sort of thing really interesting. Really, really interesting. Giving yourself a basically ridiculous boundary…I mean, we did that with the first Field Music album, really. We said we were gonna have a really limited palette of sounds, and sonically it’s gonna be really boring, it’s gonna be pretty straightforward. It’s gonna be no sonic surprises: acoustic guitar, clean electric guitar, some distortion…just some guitar bits and drums and pinao, and how can we make that different? How can we arrange that to be a different thing?

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Just as Field Music travelled all the way from England for Saturday night’s gig at the Bell House in Brooklyn, I made the almost 5 hour trek up from Washington, DC, and had the privilege of interviewing them after the show (check out the TGTF review). Apologies in advance for the slightly shambolic nature of parts of the interview. We were in a room that was supposed to be private and quiet, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. Big thanks to David(above, left) and Peter(above, right) Brewis for taking almost an hour to sit down with me, even though they hadn’t slept for over 24 hours, to Skippy and the staff at Bell House for being so hospitable, and to Matt at Memphis Industries for setting it up. Below you’ll find part 1 of the interview, with part 2 to come on Monday.

Note: The audio of this interview is  located below. The transcript is included below and after the cut. Descriptions of what is happening have been placed between asterisks, i.e. “*Peter enters the room*”

MP3: Field Music Interview – Part 1

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

So this is Mary Beth Howard, and I’m from the UK music blog There Goes the Fear, and we’re here after the Field Music show at the Bell House in Brooklyn. So thanks for taking the time to talk with me.

David: You’re very welcome.

So I thought the show tonight was great, how do you think it went?

David: Um, we were physically not entirely up to the task. Mainly through airplane dehydration. But other than that, pretty good! I enjoyed it, even though about 40 minutes in, the prospect of me singing in falsetto dwindled dangerously.

It’s like “that’s not happening!”

David: [Makes screeching noise] That’s about as close as I can get now.

This is a rescheduled gig, so what was the deal with the original one, somone was sick?

David: Yes, during the paranoia around swine flu, both here and in the UK, we were in a situation where I had flu-like symptoms, and we…if, erm…we probably wouldn’t have been allowed on the plane. If we did make it on the plane, and I was seriously ill while we were here, because it was something I had symptoms for, our insurance wouldn’t have covered it! Our holiday insurance wouldn’t have covered it, like a pre-existing condition, and hells bells, I could not afford any kind of medical treatment in this country!

Of course! No one can!

David: Erm, and as it turned out, I wasn’t really ill, I wasn’t very ill, just the kind of little ill that people often are over the winter.

A cold or something?

David: Yeah, which made it doubly frustrating, because it really felt like we’d wasted everybody’s time, so that’s the long version of that story.

Okay, so how did you decide to come back just for this show, I know you’re doing some shows in March or something, why didn’t you just do it then?

David: Umm, for a number of reasons. Partly because Skippy, who runs this venue, really, really wanted us to come and play. Partly because we’ve always had good gigs in New York and Chicago, people always want to come and see us. So it felt like the sensible thing to do before the album came out, just to remind people, like…

Like, “It’s coming!”

David: Like, oh, we’re back, we’re starting to play again and we’ve got a new record. And it’s very difficult for us to judge, erm, whether people in the US care.

Some of us do, the ones who know!

David: Yeah! And we only really find out when we come to play. It’s not like at home where…Well, I find the UK to have a very kind of insular music industry, which is kind of…somebody sneezes, and it’s like news! And here, I mean one of the things that we found in the past is that we’ll put a record out and then two weeks later, for instance…I mean, people probably haven’t discovered the record yet.

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Located in a slightly run down industrial area of Brooklyn, there’s not much about the Bell House from the outside to recommend it. Once you get inside, however, the venue is fabulous. There’s a cozy bar with very friendly servers open from 5pm, which is convenient if you’re mental like me and like to show up hours early for gigs. Inside the performance space, which is built in a converted 1920s warehouse, there are “25-foot wooden arched ceilings, a 450-square foot stage, and unobstructed views from any part of the room.” Three large chandeliers light the room between acts, and their playlist was fantastic (Phoenix, Yeasayer, Field Music, Fleet Foxes, the Beatles and Travis, to name a few). Although this was my first visit to the Bell House, I’m fairly sure that it would be impossible to have a bad gig experience there, and that was certainly true of the phenomenal Field Music show on Saturday night.

The first of two openers, the Mugs, are a local band who according to the barman play at Bell House so often they’re practically the house band. Featuring great harmonies and driving beats, this four-piece was very energetic, dancing around on stage through most of their songs, and had the crowd moving with them as well. A couple of highlights for me were the guitar breakdown in their third song and the song later in their set where the singer brought out a megaphone. Although the venue wasn’t packed yet and the crowd mostly hung back from the stage, they seemed to have a strong local following.  By the end of their short 30-minute set the crowd was yelling for an encore. While they sound much better live than they do in recordings, the Mugs are definitely worth a listen.

Second opener, the Spinto Band, came all the way from Wilmington, Delaware, for this gig, their first of the year. The band’s six members contributed to their rich, full sound. In all, they boast 3 guitarists (1 acoustic, 2 electric), a bassist, a drummer and a keyboardist. Their set was full of energy from start to finish, and their music was very dance-y.  While they definitely sounded like a modern indie band, something about their sound, most likely their harmonies combined with “oohs” and “aahs” and hand claps, reminded me of an earlier era. They made their set even more fun with the addition of the ukulele and the kazoo on a couple of songs. The only minor complaint I can make about their set is that it was sometimes hard to hear the vocals above the music, but overall they were a great opener, and they got the crowd energized before Field Music took the stage.

But of course the real highlight of the night was Sunderland band Field Music. They were originally scheduled to perform here in late November, but they had to reschedule because David came down with flu-like symptoms in the middle of the swine flu pandemic. They flew all the way from England (and returned the next day!) for this one-off gig because they felt they owed it to the fans and to Skippy, the venue’s booker, on whose birthday they were supposed to play in November.

In an industry that’s rife with gimmicks and auto-tuning, it was very refreshing to see the real thing: four men sitting down at their instruments to play their own distinctive style of pop music. Saying “we’re not very good at jokes,” they let the music do the talking, with just a short “thank you very much, indeed!” between songs.

Their set was a mix of about half “classic” Field Music songs from before their hiatus in 2007 and half tracks from their new album, ‘Field Music (Measure),’ due out in the UK on 15th February and in the US on 16th February. While the two live-only members, Kev and Ian, stayed on the guitar, keyboard and bass throughout the show, David and Peter Brewis rotated every couple of songs between drums, guitar and keyboards, with David even coming up front for a few songs from his side project, School of Language. The Brewises  later admitted to me in an interview that they’re terrified of playing the new songs live and are more comfortable with the others, but they seemed to have a great time playing them and they sounded fantastic. It’s a testament to both their performance abilities and the brilliance of their new material that the audience was just as into the new songs as they were their old favorites. The band’s signature complicated rhythms and intricate sound were somehow even better live than they are on the albums. For two men who have a very clear vision for their sound and control every step of the recording process themselves, it’s great that they’ve been able to find two men to play in their live band that can both fulfill their vision of the songs and add a little something special on top.

This was one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to quite a few, so I’m begging you, if you get the chance to see Field Music, then by all means, take it!

After the jump: set list and photos.

For more Field Music goodness, keep your eyes on TGTF over the next couple of weeks. We’ll have an interview with David and Peter Brewis, as well as a review of the new double album, ‘Field Music (Measure)’.

Field Music will be embarking on a three-week tour of the UK and Ireland starting on 15 February 2010 in London. Visit their myspace page to see if they’re playing near you.

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Field Music have announced a string of dates around the UK and Ireland for early 2010. Expect more to be added as time goes on.

Thursday 7th January 2010 – London Hoxton Bar & Kitchen
Wednesday 24th February 2010 – Glasgow Nice N Sleazy
Thursday 25th February 2010 – Leeds Brudenell Social Club
Friday 26th February 2010 – Manchester Islington Mill
Sunday 28th February 2010 – Sheffield University
Monday 1st March 2010 – Birmingham O2 Academy 2
Tuesday 2nd March 2010 – Oxford O2 Academy 2
Friday 5th March 2010 – Dublin Crawdaddy

Sunderland’s Field Music have announced a string of UK gigs for November and a one-off in London in January.

Friday 13th November 2009 – Liverpool, The Bumper
Thursday 19th November 2009 – Manchester, Deaf Institute
Saturday 21st November 2009 – Glasgow, Captain’s Rest
Sunday 22nd November 2009 – Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s
Friday 27th November 2009 – Newcastle, The Cluny
Saturday 28th November 2009 – Newcastle, The Cluny
Thursday 7th January 2010 – London, Hoxton Bar & Grill