Although it is not solipsistic, Flat White Moon is Field Music’s most personal, most revealing, warmest-sounding album so far. David and Peter Brewis have opened up. Their ninth studio album together opens with a seeming declaration. “Orion from the Street” has a drum pattern, bubbling, whooshing sounds and weaving, treated guitar unambiguously alluding to The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”. Field Music have never before so directly acknowledged an element of their musical autobiography in their own compositions.
There are more nods to The Beatles. “When You Last Heard from Linda” has shades of 1966 Fabs; the White Album permeates the chorale sections of “No Pressure”; a McCartney-via-XTC line of attack colours “Invisible days”. Looking elsewhere, Led Zeppelin’s “Trampled Underfoot” may have informed “I’m the One Who Wants to be With You”. But the album’s clipped rhythms, reductive, post punk-ish approach to prog-rock sources and the concision are uniquely Field Music’s.
As well as the fresh signals of what’s musically infused the brothers' lives, the lyrics feel as if they refer to actual people and situations which have been experienced – including losses. Like the biographical pen-portraits Paul Weller created for Setting Sons, the affecting, reflective “The Curtained Room” is a snapshot looking back over a life lived to ponder what was, what is and what might have been. The protagonist of the snappy “Do Me a Favour” grapples with getting to grips with another person’s point of view. For the subject of “Not When You’re in Love”, “trees bow down for you, and it’s a wonderful thing.”
Their last album, Making A New World, conceptually conjured with what rippled forth after World War One. Here, while sometimes indirect, the driving concept appears to be the lives of the brothers Brewis themselves. Field Music consistently make great albums and the magnificent Flat White Moon – their poppiest to date – is yet another.
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