Only “music work” matters to the skewed pop masterminds of Field Music
British brothers Peter and David Brewis started recording as Field Music in 2004, after spending years playing in bands with other musicians. Their sound features a skewed rhythmic attack that gives their music a unique sensibility, despite the sunny harmonies and catchy melodies. They’ve refined their approach on Commontime, an album that’s closer to pure pop than anything they’ve previously done.
David says they chose the title to deride the comments they get about “weird time signatures … Common time is orchestral speak for straight 4/4. To us, doing two or three songs on a record that aren’t 4/4 doesn’t seem that extreme. Surely everyone’s heard ‘Take Five’? We both play drums and tend to have an idea of what the rhythm should do before we start recording. Percussion doesn’t take up a lot of sonic space, so you can do things which are quite intricate, without getting in the way of the song.”
The tunes on the record sound bright and carefree, but an underlying sense of expectations not realized brings weight to the proceedings. “We always laugh at our own grumpiness and tend to skewer our own happiness,” says David. “We don’t wallow in misery or take our own opinions too seriously—there’s already too many musicians doing that. I think it’s more honest to recognize that there are always conflicting elements to how we feel at any one time.”
Field Music, the duo’s nom de musique, sounds more like a genre than a band name, which is what they were aiming at. “We wanted something that didn’t sound like a band,” says David. “When we started, it seemed like everyone was the Somethings and were pretending to be a gang of lads in a band, and we’ve never been that. I read that Kraftwerk referred to themselves as ‘music workers.’ I quite like that.”
—j. poet
