Field Music - Tones of Town

One of the striking consistencies during the emergence of the North East music scene a few years ago was the focus upon the instant and the frenetic. Maximo Park, the Futureheads, even the tenuously-Mackem Franz Ferdinand focussed on poppy post-punk, a trend continued via the emergence of the dubiously punctuated Kubichek! and DARTZ!

Lurking in their raucous shadow were Field Music, more interested in creating heart-warming hooks and soaring, melodic pop than in call-and-response choruses or NME pigeonholes, whilst having to contend with all-too-regular accusations of blandness and ‘Heads cronyism. Although it was true that they never seemed at their best in cavernous surroundings like Newcastle Academy, and especially so in some rain-sodden field filled with drunken festival types, in more intimate settings they remained tight and never less than charming. Fortunately it was this side that made it across on their eponymous debut LP.

And it’s an even greater slice of multi-layered near-perfect pop that the Brewis brothers and Andrew Moore have managed to transfer to the Wearside-produced Tones of Town. Toying piano loops cascade seamlessly with harmonic vocals, taut rhythms and strutting beats across eleven tracks of joyous retro-chic which evokes The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and, whisper it, Phil Collins, although its doubtful the ex-Genesis MOR-master would ever take to the beat-boxing adorning the Modest Mouse-esque Sit Tight.

Usually, a band clocking in an entire album at little over half an hour would be hailed for energetically ‘rattling through’ their songs, but such a cliché would not give Tones of Town’s antithesis to vacuous three-chord tunes the credit that it deserves. Despite the short running length, Field Music still manage to cram in enough ideas, and well thought-out ones at that, to fill many band’s careers, each listen revealing more previously undiscovered nuances amid the waves of commendably-produced musicianship. The confidence evident in almost every second of Tones of Town proves Field Music’s true arrival to the North East music scene is finally here, their second coming cementing their place as Sunderland indie poster-boys and suggesting that in future, they may be rewarded with a review not mentioning the ‘F’ word.