There are artists who manage to translate good press into commercial success. There are artists who succeed despite the best efforts of music critics, as frequently evidenced by the charts and the schedules of the world’s stadium venues. And then there are artists who have to settle for having the phrase “critically acclaimed” attached to them so often that it almost becomes part of their name: the Critically Acclaimed Big Star, whose first album sold fewer than 10,000 copies and whose most celebrated gig was performed before an audience entirely comprised of rock writers; the Critically Acclaimed Nick Drake, the adverts for whose third album, Pink Moon, contained both hyperventilating praise from Rolling Stone – “the beauty of his voice is its own justification” – and the admission from his record company that “his last two albums haven’t sold a shit”; the Critically Acclaimed Go-Betweens, whose drummer, Lindy Morrison, the very model of plain-spoken Antipodean candour, once summed up their career with the words “no one cared except for rock critics and a few wanky students”.
It is, fairly obviously, to the ranks of the Critically Acclaimed that Field Music belong. Over the past 11 years, the output of Sunderland’s Brewis brothers – five albums, a soundtrack, a B-sides compilation, a covers compilation and two solo releases each – has attained rapturous reviews, a Mercury prize nomination and the public approval of an admittedly peculiar mix of celebrity fans, including Prince, Al Kooper and Vic Reeves – which sounds not unlike the seating plan for the world’s most awkward dinner party. They’ve also achieved a grand total of two weeks in the top 75. They run their musical careers “like a fairly unsuccessful small business”, a state of affairs that occasionally permeates their lyrics (“Baby, we’re going for broke,” offers Commontime’s I’m Glad, “we’re heading for the red, but isn’t everyone?”) and even their sound. For all its baroque string arrangements, jazzy chord sequences, vocal harmonies and beautiful, slick production, Commontime never sounds sumptuous. There’s something precise, carefully considered and economical about everything on it, from the twitchy funk of single The Noisy Days Are Over, to It’s a Good Thing’s off-kilter take on 80s pop, to the gorgeous piano-and-strings ballad The Morning Is Waiting.
Sometimes, it seems fairly obvious how this state of affairs came to pass. Field Music are certainly not a band to grab people’s attention on first glance; were the Brewis brothers any more anonymous-looking, you suspect they would have difficulty recognising each other. They can occasionally sound as if they have been scientifically engineered to appeal to rock writers: it appears to be some kind of legal requirement to mention Steely Dan in every Field Music review, but over the course of an hour, Commontime also variously evokes XTC, Prefab Sprout, Peter Gabriel, Scritti Politti, Talking Heads and Todd Rundgren, cerebrally inclined critical stalwarts all. At other times, however, their lot seems faintly baffling. In the past, Field Music have certainly been guilty of overburdening their music with ideas, albeit good ones, until it can feel like a faintly wearing exercise in showing everyone how clever they are. But Commontime strips things back from 2011’s clotted Plumb. There are moments here that feel informed by the complexities of prog rock: I’m Glad’s tricky, ungainly time signature; the serpentine bass riff and angular guitar soloing of Indeed It Is and the episodic Trouble at the Lights, which keeps thrillingly relocating from dolorous synth-backed ballad to heady swirls of harmony vocals to hushed piano interlude, and concludes with a churning instrumental finale that has a touch of the Beatles’ I Want You (She’s So Heavy) about it. But elsewhere, Commontime feels like a curiously uncomplicated pleasure, no matter how painstakingly it was put together: on Disappointed and Stay Awake, their inspiration and their penchant for weird structures distill into breezily fantastic pop songs.
On paper at least, Field Music can seem a bit cold and clinical – all those smart-arse influences, the meticulousness of their sound – but there’s a very infectious warmth to Commontime. It’s an album packed with ruminations on aging and parenthood that ring true, rather than sound mawkish. The Noisy Days Are Over and But Not for You approach the friend who flatly refuses to grow up when all around them are settling down, with a finely balanced cocktail of exasperation and tenderness; Indeed It Is perfectly captures the moment when you’re jolted by the realisation that adulthood, with all its mundane worries, is irrevocably upon you; How Should I Know If You’ve Changed and They Want You to Remember deal with the bittersweet lure of nostalgia.
Commontime isn’t perfect – it’s slightly too long, and could happily have lost a couple of less distinguished tracks – but there’s still more than enough here to suggest that the reason Field Music are critically acclaimed might have less to do with the kind of band they are than the quality of what they do. Like the Critically Acclaimed Big Star and the Critically Acclaimed Nick Drake, it might well be the Brewis brothers’ fate to be more widely appreciated at a later time: rock history suggests that the good will out eventually. Given how good Commontime is, it would be nice if it happened sooner rather than later.
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