Send "Field Music " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork. |
 When Field Music announced in 2007 the group was going on hiatus, the band stressed that the break was not a break up. In the ensuing months, brothers David and Peter Brewis kept working-- the former as School of Language and the latter as the Week That Was-- each occasionally enlisting the services of the other. And now, a couple of years later, Field Music have indeed reunited (albeit minus keyboard/utility player Andrew Moore, reportedly training to be a chef). You've got to love a band that stays true to its word.Field Music last left off with 2007's Tones of Town, a relatively manageable 11 songs over a modest 30 or so minutes. The pair now seems refreshed and reenergized for the third Field Music LP, Measure-- it runs a staggering 20 tracks spread out over 70 minutes. Factor in the formidable arrangements, which often make a single song sound like two or three or four crammed together, and before you even press play you know Measure won't be casual listening. In that regard the brothers Brewis don't disappoint, either. Retaining an affinity for the fussier side of XTC, Field Music values careful precision over outright prodigious velocity, which keeps their music from tipping over into the proggy abyss. Further, it laces their songs with winningly fragmented melodies that don't always resolve or even repeat but still provide a vital point of entry to the band's rigorous compositions. That's the upside. The downside is that Field Music have a tendency to come off so cerebral, their charms are sometimes buried beneath the non-stop musical flourishes. Constantly inventive/evolving electric and acoustic guitar filigrees, meticulous percussion, strings, finger-snaps, handclaps, and intricate harmonies that bounce from speaker to speaker: Measure is, if nothing else, a truly crafted record....full text |
| Bbc |
| After dallying around in other outfits such as early incarnations of The Futureheads and Maxïmo Park, Peter and David Brewis formed Field Music in 2004. Presentable gents both, there’s something semi-bookish, almost faintly Rock School about them. Stylistically, they look like a pair of teachers who may roll up at assembly to perform note-perfect renditions of Genesis’ 1980s output. Self-titled, but identified as Field Music (Measure), is the brother Brewis’ third album, who are now down to a duo after previous intern Andrew Moore fled for a future in cookery. Although both brother’s ‘solo’ albums as School of Language (David) and the conceptual The Week That Was (Peter) were also termed ‘Field Music Productions’, so in essence – if you count the B sides compilation Write Your Own History, which we are – (Measure) is technically their sixth ‘production’. At 20 tracks, it is literally an epic double. It sprawls, yet always surprises. It’s their take on the rock canon, drawing in the likes of Led Zeppelin, Kate Bush, Roxy Music, XTC and Talk Talk. It shows new wave chops on Each Time Is a New Time, Share the Words and the mid-afternoon FM of Them That Do Nothing; clunking funk on the lopsided Let’s Write A Book; the Zep' creeps in on the colossal striding rock god melodies ahoy on All You’d Ever Need To Say; and there’s post-rock balladry sparseness on the gorgeous You and I....full text |
| Guardian |
| It seems unusual to find a band quite so riven with conflicting impulses as Sunderland's Field Music, the main project of brothers Peter and David Brewis. The meandering trajectory of this double album suggests a group away with the fairies but there is control freakery at work in its taut grooves. Psychedelic vocals float hazily skywards yet guitar and drums converse with metronomic precision. The tension proves a profitable one, though and the transition from the Prince-aping funk of "Let's Write A Book" into the dreamy, wistful pop of "You and I" provides the record's most rewarding union of chalk and cheese....full text |
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