Field Music have already knocked out one of the albums of my year. At least one of the top 300. (I kid. "Plumb" is ace and I'd love to see it win the Mercury Prize.) So I'm expecting steepling melodies, clever time signature changes and some classy, warm motherboards lending their support. A touch of Northern wit too perhaps.
"Snow Watch" has a really nice unfestive, warped feel to it. Wintry psychedelia with pianos floating in the cold air and every instrument treated to within an inch of its very existence, spilling out from that inch and discolouring the space around it. "Higgs" shakes a funky chunk or two. But there isn't the swoop, the delicateness I'd hope for. I'd hoped for a brittle contrast between the Brewis Brothers swerving pop sensibility and the more geological instincts of The Digits. Instead, they meet somewhere less exciting in the middle.
There's a fractured early-Pink Floyd feel to the guitar on "Elements of the Sun" and "Travelodge Blues" opens with a typical Brewis set of progressions, choppy and purposeful. (The title I also like.) But it's not the cross-germination I was hoping for.
Even by my own obtuse standards I'm not sure what I'm getting at here.
Rating: Pop Geology out of Northern Souls
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