Field Music
Koko, London
23/11/2010

Sometimes you can easily tell who the hardcore fans are. With Guns N’ Roses it’s the ones with the battle-weary glazed look when faced with a still-empty stage. Aficionados of Sunderland’s Field Music are the ones that don’t keep swaying or tapping their feet when the next inevitable change of rhythm and switch in style occurs. It takes considerable effort to craft music this impatient, but it’s to Field Music’s credit that, mostly, they don’t come across as hard work.

Still in the early days of their existence as a five piece, the pop-proggers largely benefit from the addition of a drummer as it allows the Brewis brothers the freedom to switch between guitars, piano and percussion, while continuing to take it in turns to lead the vocals. While they are capable of sticking with an idea and letting it gather momentum (as they do wonderfully with ‘Each Time Is A New Time’ and ‘Share The Words’), their songs more typically jump off into new ideas without the slightest hesitation -  shifting between rhythms, jettisoning melodic hooks and generally just going any which way they please.

“The next few songs are from our new album”, says David Brewis before they deliver a succession of some of the more straight forward stuff from third album ‘(Measure)’. It would be easy to favour songs like ‘Them That Do Nothing’ and the title track, simply because they satiate a desire for them to just bloody get on with it. But for all of their randomness, every snippet is actually really engaging – either magically harmonic, slickly danceable or just rhythmically great fun. While occasionally it’s a little bit too forced, largely it is restlessness channelled into creativity and it keeps on giving. Randomly brilliant.

Martin Cordiner