Description
Label Review.
2018 album.
Our Overview.
Sunderland based band Field Music got the recognition they had so justifiably deserved by the greater music masses in 2015 when Prince tweeted a link – twice – to the Brewis brothers’ spare and stylish single The Noisy Days Are Over and also commented “Beautiful… strange”.
The band have built up one of British music's most unique catalogues, sublime art-pop that never fails to challenge and now they return with their sixth album, Open Here. The two years since ‘Commontime’ have been strange and turbulent. If you thought the world made some kind of sense, you may have questioned yourself a few times in the past two years. And that questioning, that erosion of faith - in people, in institutions, in shared experience - runs through every song on Field Music's new album.
But there's no gloom here. For Peter and David Brewis, playing together in their small riverside studio has been a joyful exorcism. ‘Open Here’ is the last in a run of five albums made at the studio, an unprepossessing unit on a light industrial estate in Sunderland. Whilst the brothers weren't quite tracking while the wrecking balls came, the eviction notice received in early 2017 gave the brothers a sense of urgency in the recording of ‘Open Here’. There probably won't be many other rock records this year, or any year, which feature quite so much flute and flugelhorn (alongside the saxophones, string quartet and junk box percussion). But somehow or other, it comes together. Over thirteen years and six albums, Field Music have managed to carve a niche where all of these sounds can find a place; a place where pop music can be as voracious as it wants to be.
David Brewis explains, "where 'Commontime' felt like a distillation of all of the elements that make up Field Music, this feels like an expansion; as if we’re pushing in every direction at once to see how far we can go".
The brothers’ studio, on the banks of the River Wear, became a sanctuary away from everything political and personal, a cocoon of creativity. Conversely, making the album became an alternative way to connect to people, with a wide array of musicians invited to leave their mark, notably Sarah Hayes on flute and piccolo, Liz Corney on vocals, Pete Fraser on saxophone, Simon Dennis on trumpet and flugelhorn, a Cornshed Sisters choir and the regular string quartet of Ed Cross, Jo Montgomery, Chrissie Slater and Ele Leckie. The result is a record that is bigger in scale and grander than anything Field Music have done before.