Field music second album lacks grab
Published Feb. 13, 2007
During the barrage of English bands that made their way onto our shores in 2005, Sunderland, Scotland's Field Music represented something different. Bloc Party and its ilk had Gang of Four-style post-punk on lockdown, but Field Music was nearly the exact opposite. Its debut harkened back almost exactly to XTC's Skylarking, but probably because of the musical climate in which it entered, it sounded more like a breath of fresh air than a tired pastiche.
Now, a few years later, Field Music still represents something different than its peers. Bloc Party, The Futureheads, in which a Field Music member used to play, have both released second albums that are starkly different than their debuts, and Kaiser Chiefs and The Rakes are sitting on follow-ups that are also near 180s. But Tones of Town, Field Music's second album, is a direct continuation of its debut, and like that album, its results are varied.
Tones of Town is a pitch-perfect interpretation of what '60s-inspired pop should sound like some 40-odd years later: Violins slice into jagged guitars, keyboards flutter around the background and the drums play simple, Ringo-Starr-like backbeats.
Problem is Tones of Town isn't feel music. The instrumentation is admirable in its surgical precision, but there's nothing here that really grabs you. Lyrics are pushed aside for melodies that most times echo those already brought on by the instrumentation.
One of the more telling examples is "In Context," which starts with a promising snaking guitar line and violin stabs but never builds itself into anything bigger.
The band hits its stride best on the title track, when two minutes of ebbing violins and cascading drums works its way up to about as hard-rocking a guitar bridge as this band has ever recorded. It's easily the most assertive and jarring moment on an album without enough of them, and after two opening songs that just ebb and flow, it snaps the album into place.
Other highlights occur on the albums shortest moments. The two-minute long "A Gap Has Appeared," with its sublime piano line and maudlin violin, is a wedge of orchestral brilliance and the softer "Kingston" sees drums that pop off like popcorn kernels.
The ultimate problem with Tones of Town is that it has countless moments of brilliance and truly transcendent sound — the pounding piano on "Sit Tight," the violin solo on "A Gap Has Appeared," the melody on "A House is Not a Home," to name a few — but too often Field Music doesn't string these moments together in its songs to transcend just that moment. It's almost reminiscent of Menomena's Friend and Foe, where minute-long portions of songs serve as downtime between spectacular seconds.
In all, Tones of Town works best as background music; it never demands your attention but can hold it in spurts. It might sound harsh to say that, but background music does have a certain niche in the actual listening experience. So Tones of Town, though critically just merely good, still deserves at least your investigation.