Field Music - Tones of Town

Genre rock Publisher Memphis Industries External Links Official Field Music Website Official Memphis Industries Website

A name like Field Music conjures up images of musicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax, traveling those Mississippi back roads, in search of undiscovered blues greatness. But Field Music is from Sunderland, England, and there's nothing remotely rural, let alone blues-y, about the music they create.

Instead, this band is quite British sounding. "Sir Tight" is bouncy, for lack of a better term, while "In Context" and "Closer at Hand" both feature rhythmic, and sometimes hyper, electric guitar. In contrast, "Kingston" couldn't be more different from these other examples. It is built upon string quartet and classical piano elements. Furthermore, "Place Yourself" also features strings.

Categorizing Field Music is troublesome. You might say Tones of Town is in a field all its own. On the one hand, XTC's adventurousness sometimes comes to mind. But even so, nothing here sounds like any particular XTC song. Saying Field Music carries on XTC's spirit, without also adopting its style, might be a more apt comparison. Nevertheless, "Give It Lose It Take It" mixes and matches various tempos, while also layering vocals, which adds up to something like a kinder, gentler, XTC's "Drums & Wires." But then again the track also incorporates a chime-y sound, like something you might hear on a child's music box, which would be anathema to XTC's many times cynical approach.

The name Field Music is also a bit of an oxymoron because there is little on Tones of Tone that suggests the great outdoors, such as fields. Its complicated, tight arrangements come off like insular studio experiments - and successful ones at that - instead.

Even so, experimental rarely equates to soulful and expressive, and Field Music's songs sometimes lack the immediacy of truly moving pop music. This is easy music to respect, but it is many times difficult to warm up to. It gets a little cold out in them there fields.

Field Music - "In Context" Video