Album review: Field Music - Plumb
Peter and David Brewis’ fourth missive is a cocktail of complexity, no doubt. But is the mix right?
Peter and David Brewis’ fourth missive is a cocktail of complexity, no doubt.
This kooky 15-track beast is bursting at the seams with time signatures, riffs, asides, motifs, instrumental noodling, harmonies and - underpinning it all - ideas. Great in theory, but the way they all jostle for your attention and jolt the songs about can be disorientating.
At it’s brightest the Sunderland band filter a late-era Beatles psychedelia through their fragmented instrument-heavy indie, as on Start The Day Right. A surprisingly funky bassline directs A New Town to the dancefloor, too.
But Plumb would likely benefit from some judicious editing to make a more coherent set, without it losing its higgledy-piggledy charm.
It’s not until almost the end, when Just Like Everyone Else strides onto the speakers with its slow, liquid guitar strum and pulsing bass undercurrent, that it feels like they’ve exhausted the urge to cram a school music department’s assets into each song.
Their single (I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing is a fulsome, jerky highlight that bizarrely signs off the record, but at least leaves the brothers - and the listener - on a clear-headed note.
Most Read
- 1 Seven Sisters stabbing: Three jailed over Green Lanes gang killing
- 2 Shell casings found after Islington gun reports
- 3 Covid patients in north London hospitals with Plan B rules set to lift
- 4 Disqualified driver jailed after hit-and-run involving Islington schoolgirl
- 5 Emma Thompson and Sir Ian McKellen line up to play Whodunnit detectives
- 6 How often do Londoners cycle to work in each borough?
- 7 Artisan coffee house opens in Angel Central following £16m refurbishment
- 8 Plan to extend popular Gooners pub with shops and flats
- 9 Fake Dyson Airwrap and Primark baby toy among recent recalled items
- 10 Freud's Last Session: King's Head Theatre *****
3 stars
