Tones of Town

Field Music – a trio of loyal experimenters

Hundreds of albums and dozens of new bands – this is what a modern consumer of audio products faces with, but here lies a paradoxical situation, when you feel like listening to something fresh the chances to collide with something that was said a million times before are growing extremely high. But this is by the way might be not a bad result of searches, after all it is better to spend your money on a collection of musical cliches which you will listen for a couple of times at least then to come across something weird, frightful and alien to your mind. But on the other hand, where could we be now if there were no endless searches of numerous bands? This draws a corresponding conclusion: a listener needs a compromise between novelty and a familiar music. To all appearance this is how the members of English rock trio Field Music have been thinking. After their debut album Field Music in 2005 the band was hailed as the link between post punk and life asserting rock of 60’s. The album probable didn’t make a new rock stars out of the band’s members but it gave them a chance to claim about their loyally experimental views upon music. After spending a whole year on tours the band decided not to put the things off and released a new album Tones Of Town where the musicians continue developing their original scheme.

Tones Of Town is full of unexpected variations in the field of pop rock

Having the best discoveries of indie bands, pop rock harmonies and melodic vocal polyphonies wrapped up in a pretty complex arrangements Field Music has represented something that can be characterized as a progressive indie pop. This word combination may seem frightening but in reality the material sounds fresh and attractive. The band managed to achieve not only an intelligible and accessible sounding but to make the songs as they say catchy. They speak about simple in a complicated manner and vice versa. The album’s single In Context is one of the brightest examples of Field Music’s possibilities. The song is full of unexpected variations in the pop rock field, there are many characteristic features of this style here but it is impossible to predict how the song would develop at the time you hear the first verse. The musicians are ready to represent a more complex variant of their ideas, for example Tones Of Towns caries an improvisational character and though the song is similar in mood with In Context it still sounds heavier. One can easily find notes of old British rock school scattered among the songs. There is an evident influence of The Beatles on A House Is Not Home and vocal parties on Kingston, which is probably the most simple composition of the album associates with early Pink Floyd. And at the same time the band sounds distinctively, all songs posses some common features and this makes the album to be an indivisible substance.

Field Music likes to have a good sound

The central axis of Field Music’s songs is dislocated not only relatively musical clichés of the styles they are influenced with but also in their lyrics. A lively atmosphere of the songs contrasts with the subject matters of some texts, which are dedicated to routine, everyday labor and other delights of life, look at the song Working To Work for instance. But Field Music starts contradicting to these statements too when it tacitly acknowledges that life despite some things is not a bad thing and we don’t have much to complain about. It is evident that Field Music loves experimenting but this love is not spread over the sound of Tones Of Town. The band has a good quality of production and corresponds the standards of the genres they are working with. Since all the instruments are recorded with that very sounding they are supposed to have all the results that the band achieves become audible to a listener, there is no need to build a long associative chain to understand them. Tones Of Town is a really interesting album. While having pretty complex elements the album’s basis still remains in the sunny and positive mood, which brings all the possibilities of misunderstanding down to zero.