Field Music
Hailing from Sunderland, England, indie/art rockers Field Music were formed in the early 2000s by siblings Peter and David Brewis.
The Mercury Prize-nominated band on their 2020 album, Making A New World, in their own words:
We’ve done songs about ultrasound and about shooting yourself for the sake of art and about gender reassignment surgery and about Becontree housing estate. We’ve even done a party tune about sanitary pads, called Only In A Man’s World and a funk stomper called Money is a Memory about an office worker in the German treasury making the last reparation payment 101 years after the end of the First World War.
Listen below via Spotify:
The band’s music draws on influences as wide-ranging as Stravinsky, stax R&B, FleetwoodMac, Serge Gainsbourg, Thelonious Monk and Kate Bush. Field Music’s sound is like all of the pop music you’ve ever heard but with a distinctly British – and north-eastern – tinge. They’ve become known for a deconstructionist approach to songwriting, playfully twisting compositions into new and odd shapes, with a refreshing disregard for convention and cliché.
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“Field Music are one of Britain’s most consistently creative and thoughtful yet undervalued bands, and they continue to plough a lonely furrow with this 19-track song cycle on the after-effects of the First World War. ”
The Times -
“Clever, illuminating brilliance.”
The Irish Times -
“Making A New World resonates with hidden meaning and lost connections.”
Q -
“They’ve taken the unsexiest subject matter and made it sing”
The Evening Standard -
“It takes a band well-versed in nuance to pull off a project of this sophistication”
Loud & Quiet -
“[A] retrospective think-piece that is also enthralling to listen to. ”
Gigwise -
“The Brewis brothers’ concept album about the impact of the first world war brings left-field pop to topics ranging from skin grafts to period shame”
The Guardian
