The third and final instalment in South London cult heroes' THE FIELD MICE'S all-too-brief history, "For Keeps" ended up as the band's swansong, typically swimming gamely against the tide of Grunge and Nirvana's all-encompassing "Nevermind" when it was originally released in October 1991.
The band's final phase found core members Bobby Wratten (vocals/ guitar) and Michael Hiscock (bass) augmented by guitarist Harvey Williams, Annemari Davies (keyboards/ guitar/ vocals) and drummer Mark Dobson, and "For Keeps" and its' attendant singles - as usual included to complement the album by a meticulous LTM - remains a tantalising glimpse of what the expanded line-up of The Field Mice could have achieved had they stayed together.
To put "For Keeps" - arguably Wratten and co's most consistent work to these ears - into a proper historical context, though, we need to first visit the two trailer singles that the five-piece Field Mice released in the months leading up to the album's appearance. "September's Not So Far Away" is something of a lost classic, with Rickenbackers chiming in a delicious rush of power pop that comes on like the early Byrds or "Radio City"-era Big Star. It's not a million miles from a couple of the album's best moments, but the ensuing "Missing The Moon" (released merely a month before "For Keeps" in September 1991) throws a real curve. It flirts with New Order-ish poppy electronica in the way its' forbears like "Triangle" and "Let's Kiss And Make Up" did, only diving in to a greater extent, and benefitting from the purity of Annemari Davies' voice.
Typically, in Field Mice lore, when "For Keeps" finally arrived, it resembled neither of these singles, and these days sounds rather like a fine distillation of both the band's past and future and - in some cases - a mutation of both within the same song, though this isn't a bad thing either, as we'll see.
Certainly, there is bold new ground being broken here. The strident "Coach Station Reunion", for instance, is a fast'n'forceful, spangly guitar groover that sounds like a cousin of "September's Not So Far Away", with a nice line in strum-stun, quasi-psych guitar FX, while - even more radically - tracks like "Tilting At Windmills" the closing "Freezing Point" take the band's dalliances with the dance-pop crossover to much greater lengths. The former is especially trippy and spacy, with Jah Wobble-ish, frequency-defying basslines and funky drummer beats and recalls the smiley pop grooves the likes of Shack were blissing out on at the time. "Freezing Point," though, is the one that sorts the wheat from the chaff where the band's hardcore followers are concerned. Heavier and drone-ier than ever before, with guitars that crackle and spit and thunderous ritual drums, it's closer to Loop and even My Bloody Valentine than the limp-wristed likes of The Flatmates, and still sounds like one in the eye for the detractors who still lump The Field Mice in with the worst of the fey janglers.
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Nonetheless, there are several tracks that remind us of The Field Mice's more pastoral days. "Willow" (sung by Annemari in a likeable Sarah Cracknell-style warble), "And The First Kiss" -where Wratten's voice takes on a sad, Mark Kozelek-ish timbre - are typically effective acoustic gambols, while "Think Of These Things" is quintessential lovelorn Field Mice in the vein of "End Of The Affair." Over a determined strum and tremulous piano, Wratten's opening gambit is: "You have a life outside of me, it bothers the hell out of me", before the jealousy really kicks in and he admits "I want you all to myself." It's an emotion we can all relate too, regardless of how specific his target is.
Elsewhere, on tracks like the lovely, ethereal pop of the opening "Five Moments", the warmth of the old and the shock of the new collide. On this one, the likes of Slowdive spring to mind, while on tunes like the yearning "Star Of David" and the shimmering beauty of "Of The Perfect Kind", Wratten and co demonstrate they were learning the art of stretching out and building to memorable crescendoes in their own sweet time. This clutch of tracks are the ones that provide the direct bridge from the band's earlier, naive days to a future that could have provided something more muscular, but still recognisable for a band who turned on by experimentation to the very end.
Sadly, that future wasn't to be. With the cover artwork barely dry on "For Keeps", the band disintegrated onstage at a London show at the Tufnell Park Dome, with Wratten continuing on a lengthy cult journey that has since taken in Northern Picture Library and his current obsession, Trembling Blue Stars. His is a canon of work that is still largely underappreciated, but one which can only now gain critical ground thanks to LTM's usual attention to detail. "For Keeps" once again proves handsomely that the historical makeover is truly worthwhile.
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