Field Music
Tones of Town

This record left our Maggie feeling happy.

Now ... again I'm reviewing FIELD MUSIC and their bonny new album TONES OF TOWN. If music were a dog this would be golden retriever all prim and proper with shiny nose and bright eyes collecting your slippers and getting drool all over them. Its very prog and 70's with their harmonies and sounds they're busting out. We like the chaps in these parts and seeing them live I was blown away by their technical skills and arrangements. On record its a different animal and at times I find the whole thing a bit disparate and unconnected but this may be cured by a few listens. Certainly not berift of ideas this gang and we are treated to loops and hooks for fun. The album features last week single of the week "A House is not a home" which sounds more Grange Hill and jolly the more I hear it. Enough ideas and knees up moments to fill a kennel with.

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What their label says...

As with their eponymous debut, Tones of Town was self-produced. Recording took place at their own Eight Music studio in Sunderland between 31st January and 16th May.

Where 'Field Music' was the sound of a group making the record they knew they were capable of; dryly-produced, ambitiously skewed, multilayered pop which gradually revealed its intricacies over repeated listens; Tones of Town sees Field Music pushing and scratching at all of the boundaries implicit in their debut; the sound of a band moving in several directions at once, searching for ways to surprise themselves, taking risks and trying something new.

That could be the cut-and-paste beatboxing which concludes 'Sit Tight', the stacked Day At The Races harmonies which lead into 'Closer At Hand', the tumble from dreaming overlapped marimba into an undiluted joyous rock guitar riff on the opener 'Give It Lose It Take It' or where the spiraling modular structures of the first record reach their logical extreme on the title track. On 'A House Is Not A Home' (Brewis, P) and first single 'In Context', Field Music could even be described as 'funky', albeit in a peculiarly singular avant-mackem way.

The album does though have a (possibly unintentional) unifying theme. Something along the lines of "There's no place like home, but how come I don't always feel 'at home', and what does that mean anyway?" Lyrically, Tones of Town, presents itself as a collection of missives from a generation who don't want to complain because they're well aware that they've never had it so good, but who nonetheless feel somewhat dislocated; geographically, socially, personally, from each other, from their jobs, from supermarkets, from indie music and from television.

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