Field Music
ON completion of their new album, the bright and poignant Flat White Moon, Field Music’s Peter Brewis came to a realisation. “I think we’ve done as many albums as Led Zeppelin did!” he declares proudly. “And sold about 80 million less…”
Yet Field Music’s mere survival, as a cottage industry on the far outskirts of the pop mainstream, is worth any number of platinum discs. “We’re really lucky that we’ve managed to develop an audience that are happy with all of these tangents we might go off on,” says David Brewis. “It’s partly luck, and partly because that’s what we’ve forced on them! And maybe driven a few casual listeners away. But if that’s the price of being able to do whatever we want, that’s how it’s got to be.”
There are other sacrifices too, of course. It’s hard to imagine Led Zeppelin building their own studio – three times – or driving themselves to gigs by borrowing their dad’s car. And the brothers remain rooted in Sunderland, as much out of financial necessity as overriding affection for their hometown. “Sunderland’s really cheap to live,” says Peter frankly. “I don’t think we could live anywhere else in the UK.”
There is an old-fashioned view that artists need to be absolved of all practical responsibility in order to tap into the muse, but the Brewises are having none of it. “We use the pragmatism as a way to make the space to be creative,” argues David. “And the creativity happens in our brains – it doesn’t require all those clichéd rock’n’roll stimuli. We’re thinking about things all the time.”
FIELD MUSIC
MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES, 2005
An impressive debut
