If it's an instant hit of dreamy-pure pop with a bitersweet twist that you need, then the latest offering from Mackem trio FIELD MUSIC might just be what the doctor ordered! Other than that, you could spread a Cadbury's Caramel with marmite!
Crystal clear upbeat pop with inert psychosis at the helm, this is music for the dislocated generation.
Sit Tight! We are gently counted in and soon become lost in a swimming, swirling sea of ever changing tempos that work hard at shaking the coherence from your thoughts from within the centre of that characteristic strong-beating assault on the senses. Here it comes complete with beatboxin' FX, and ends with the disturbing convulsions of a last-gasp life-breath.
Thematic concerns link together various shifting shuffles towards, and yet away from a sense of 'Home' – think of the magnetic power to repel and attract - fragmented by drum rolls that resemble every seventh wave of this ocean's bittersweet home – 'Tones Of Town' is a title track featuring the click of castanets and a melancholy string arrangement with the sonic boost of boing-boing FX as an aid to the bounce. When it drops out into a more subsonic groove, it becomes a gentle reminder of the unfathomable symbolic complexity of bricks and mortar.
Sometimes it's a straight up take on rock n roll in the pop-prog style of the seventies, upon which a couple of tracks worth of piano are lavished. The stop-start guitars and synthesised string arrangements add depth as the tracks build and falls away like a repeated series of false starts. Simple truths float into view as the stumbling psychedelics begin to take the shape of everyday concerns. How easily the basics become blurred in life's myriad of incompatiblity!
The tunes are woven seamlessly into one another, fast, like a melanchloic tapestry, separated by a series of staccato skank-outs. Vocal harmonies follow the pulse religiously, adding a touch of the surreal to this already absurd notion of domesticity.
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The marriage of strings and piano whips up a deadly fusion, no more apparent than in the anthemic boom of 'A Gap Has Appeared', a ditty which rhapsodises and handclaps its way into your heart. This is upbeat way beyond the 'smile-in-the-face-of-evil' capacity to stretch that already psychotic grin still further. As far as inspiration goes, I can't help but think of Prozac as the cheeriness of the ivories cuts a jagged path into disorientation and misery before filtering out all evil.
Suddenly it has moved on still further with lines like: “The questions we tend to ask/Are useless if time is too fast”. Who said life was simple?
For a central theme, try to imagine a beat the clock version of that popular idea that 'Home Is Where The Head Is'. FIELD MUSIC don't explore so much as embrace several musical traditions, and the tense, nervous creation of something unique is the result of them all pulling hard in all manner of directions. It's a speeding unblinking stare-out, confused by ever changing moods and the pressure of time.
Right after the wandering despair of 'Place Yourself', 'Tones Of Town' rounds off with the 5 o'clock stomp of 'She Can Do What She Wants', unfurls the full extent of love's futile surrender and then fades out in reverse! You know it's the truth as well. She can, can't she?
If the band is new to you, then grab a listen right now – the immediacy of this particular recipe for pop might just amount to reverse time travel, and done this well, might move you accordingly.
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