MUSIC | Records
INDIE ROCK FIELD MUSIC Commontime (Memphis Industries) ●●●●● INDIE ROCK PLASTIC ANIMALS Pictures from the Blackout (Song, by Toad) ●●●●●
A L BU M O F T H E I S S U E You might be forgiven for asking, if you were the sort of person who asks these sorts of questions: whatever happened to Field Music? We get an answer from songwriter Peter Brewis on the opening track of new album Commontime. Yeah, he says, with a sardonic lilt. Yeah, we’re still here, and still making records worth listening to.
Commontime turns out to be a surprising record for a couple of reasons. Firstly, given Field Music’s status among those bands that graduated from the guitar indie heyday of the mid noughties as a shy, nerdy lot who preferred trainspotting to the girl three doors down, it’s a pleasant surprise to hear them producing something so relevant in 2016. Secondly, given their membership of that long-lost cohort, the new record is initially free of guitars. There’s barely a twang until fourth track ‘I'm Glad’, a math-rock number that seems placed to remind us that this is actually a Field Music record. Before that, and indeed after, Commontime sees Brewis and co. return to the influences fished out of 1970s and 1980s back catalogues that first turned up on 2012’s Plumb.
‘Trouble at the Lights’ contains a proper guitar breakdown reminiscent of Wings-era McCartney, ‘But Not For You’ sounds like post-glam Bowie and album opener ‘The Noisy Days Are Over’ has all the funk and irony you'd expect from Talking Heads. Plundering the hits of the past while avoiding mere pastiche takes guts (as does recording a 14-track record). And though that confidence is masked by Field Music’s trademark harmonies and melodic complexities, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Commontime properly, unashamedly rocks. (Sam Bradley) Out Fri 5 Feb.
Translation is a slow and tortuous process. Given a raw text, it takes painstaking concentration to go through line by line, word by word, and decipher the patterns and systems holding it altogether. There's often no single point at which a gloss suddenly becomes a translation, no visible click of puzzle pieces i tting together to reveal a whole; rather a sense of increasing understanding about the invisible logic beyond the marks and curves on the paper in front of you.
Listening to Plastic Animals' debut Pictures from the Blackout reminds me of that feeling. Two years in the making, it's had about as long in gestation as any record should have. At times it remains impenetrable, as if these songs were transcribed from an alien original, rather than written down, and the band have spent their time deciphering raw matter into musical notes and lyrics. Drawing parallels to Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Teenage Fanclub, and
with elements of shoegaze and krautrock colouring their sound, Plastic Animals' particular dialect of atmospheric indie rock suits the considerable length of some of the tracks on Pictures. Mario Cruzado's vocals fade in and out in concert with waves of distortion and feedback, while guitarist Ben Slade's melodies often seem present only to provide navigation points in the layered soundscapes that underpin each song. It's in some of the longest and most impenetrable tracks that you'll i nd this album's stand-out tracks, though, and on ‘Colophone’ and ‘Demmin’, clocking in at almost seven and six minutes long respectively, they really begin to delve deep between the lines.
It's not all hard work, with album opener ‘Ghosts’ acting as an accessible rubric, while lead single ‘Burial Party’ even has a danceable (well, the sort of dancing people do at shoegaze gigs) guitar riff bolted on. Good things come to those who wait, though, and Pictures from the Blackout is certainly a record that will reward the patient listener. (Sam Bradley) Out Mon 8 Feb.
FOLK MAIREARAD GREEN Summer Isles (Buie Records) ●●●●● POST-ROCK MOGWAI Atomic (Rock Action) ●●●●●
Like the island life it soundtracks and circumscribes, Mairearad Green's new long-player is windswept, escapist and picturesque. Green grew up on Scotland's Coigach Peninsula, and Summer Isles sees the singer-songwriter and composer explore her native topography – the land, the sea, the l uctuating in-between – with gorgeous accompaniment from King Creosote, Mike Vass and Annie Grace (among others) along the way. Opening salutation, 'Island Folk', alludes to the record's sense of geography,
community and (song)craft, and its music follows suit: a glorious burl across deep-rooted melodies and skirling beats that feels at once familiar and fresh. It's followed up by the celestial drive-pop of 'Star of Hope', delivered in
King Creosote's unmistakable tones. And if lines like 'l oating on the diamond silver sea' evoke his own coastal love-letter, Diamond Mine, then that record's minimalist aesthetic makes its presence felt elsewhere on Summer Isles – not least on exquisite centrepiece 'Tanera Talisman', whose haunting, sparse arrangements echo the once-inhabited tiny island's monuments and memories. The songs on Summer Isles resonate with each other, and weave an
understated ecosystem of nature, music and myth: the 'Red Throated Divers', who i rst soar into view in an elemental piano psalm later touch down on 'Tanera Talisman'.
The barren, melancholy tracks – 'Stone and Struggle' is another such highlight – are especially lovely, and if Green's voice is largely absent from the Sufjan Stevens-invoking swansong (performed by Hector McInnes), then perhaps that's i tting for an album that considers identity on the outside of things (the mainland) and in the middle of them (the water). Its i nal words are warm and apt: 'Home to me is this island'. There's no place like it. (Nicola Meighan) Out Fri 26 Feb.
74 THE LIST 4 Feb–7 Apr 2016
Despite the fact that there are still as many as 15,695 nuclear warheads in existence, popular ideas about nuclear weapons and the science of building them has been reduced from a mortal concern to a morbid curiosity. Once, we prepared for four-minute warnings; now, you can buy tours of the ruins of abandoned Pripyat (Chernobyl's service city) from black-market guides. On the back of their new album Atomic, a record which seems obsessed with the isotopes and compounds of mass destruction, we can safely say that the members of Mogwai are the sorts of chaps who might be up for one of those excursions.
It's hard to i nd fault with a record of such obvious overall quality, aside from the fact that most of it sounds a bit downbeat. But that's Mogwai’s thing, isn't it? This is high quality, high precision music that makes you feel like an extra in a sci-i horror movie, and depressing dirges with too much hi-hat come with the territory.
With that in mind, the most interesting tracks turn out to be those on which Mogwai move away from typical post-rock instrumentation and tinker with electronic and digital sounds. ‘U-235’ and ‘Weak Force’ both lack much in the way of guitars and are better for it, exhibiting the kind of precision the subject matter requires. ‘Are You a Dancer’ proves to be an unexpected treat, blending an austere guitar dissertation with a moving violin solo. But as well as the doom of nuclear warnings, the album also outlines the beauty of the atomic world, heaping praise on medical progression and how human life has improved.
I suppose if you were to pick a band to soundtrack your post- apocalyptic wasteland, you'd get Mogwai in for the job. Maybe you could pay them in rusted bike parts, or ingots of whatever rare earth materials are left in the irradiated desert wastes that were once called Scotland.
Clearly Atomic shows they've
done their homework, even if the i nished product is a little predictable. (Sam Bradley) Out Fri 1 Apr.