Playing the Field

Three years ago, indie outfit Field Music called it a day and went off to pursue “other things.” In the intervening period, brothers Peter and David Brewis formed That Was The Week That Was and School Of Language respectively, went on tour and released their debut albums. But something wasn’t quite right. While the pair were happy making new music and the records were great, they started to feel like they had beem a bit premature in calling time on Field Music. Guitarist Peter takes up the tale.

“Basically, we started playing in each other’s bands whenever either of us needed a hand and it grew from there really,” explains the musician, who is taking time out from his day hunting down venues for his wedding in order to talk to us. “We were getting on a lot better than we had been and we talked about writing together again and it grew from that.”
This rebirth of sorts (both brothers are once again at the helm of Field Music but they don’t include former member Andrew Moore in their number) has led to the release of their third album, the prog-tastic double disc set that is Field Music (Measure). According to Peter, they needed to go their separate ways in order to keep themselves sane.
“Yeah, we really needed to break up at that point,” he confesses. “We just needed to get away from one another for a bit. You know what it’s like. Sometimes everyone needs their space and that was our time. It helps that we see the band as a loose collective anyway. For example if I want to do something on my own, I’ll just do something on my own and it can still be Field Music. I mean, some of the tracks on the album have almost nothing to do with David, and there are definitely tracks on the album which have nothing to do with me.
“There are a few songs that we haven’t worked on together. We decide what gets kept and what doesn’t. It’s a kind of collective thing,” he continues. “ I went on holidays for three days – it wasn’t very long – and I came back and Dave had recorded an entire song by himself (‘Let’s Write a Book’). It is probably the best song on the album and I was absolutely gutted [laughs].”
While many bands might shy away from doing double albums, believing it to be entering the realm of cape-wearing, ivory-tinkling hairy dudes from the ‘70s, Field Music have simply used the format to push themselves as far as they’ll go. So don’t go expecting to hear songs about intergalactic battles, ok?
“We always knew we’d do a double,” reveals Peter. “We really wanted to challenge ourselves. We wanted the record to be an incoherent and imaginative piece of work that redrew the borderlines of what we do. There are some songs I’m not involved with at all and others where I’ll play guitar or bass or add some percussion. I suppose we’re redefining the band. Which is why we called the new album Field Music too. In a way, we left Field Music because we thought our definition of it had got out of control, therefore we stopped doing it and we did other things. So, when we were at the point where we thought we could redefine what we can do with this next record, we became Field Music again. We also wanted to get more emotion into our songs and see where we ended up if we were a bit more honest with ourselves.”
So there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth. The next time you see Field Music live, the band will be caked in guy-liner and clad in gonad torturing trousers…
“Not exactly,” laughs the songwriter. “I will say though, that this album is as emo as we’ll ever get...”

Field Music play Crawdaddy, Dublin (March 5) and the Pavilion, Belfast on (6).