• News

• All

Feb 15, 2018 By Christopher Roberts Field Music

Find It At: {article-find} {name} {/article-find}

Britain’s Field Music (anchored by brothers Peter and David Brewis) released a new album, Open Here, a couple of weeks back via Memphis Industries. Now its excellent first single, “Count It Up,” has a video. The song points out how comparably lucky all of us who live in democratic and developed countries in the Western world are. Andy Martin directed the video, which mainly features David Brewis walking around his hometown of Sutherland as he sings the song. Watch it below.

David Brewis had this to say about the video to NPR: “Sunderland has been a downtrodden place for quite a long time and people look for someone to blame. We initially talked about filming this video in parts of Sunderland that were either conspicuously run down or conspicuously well-to-do but once we started, we realized that the most interesting locations were the ones that had been up and down and sometimes were up and down at the same time; derelict factories that used to be the economic centre of the city or former shipyards that had been turned into apartments or business parks.

“I wanted us to get the Metro in there and the bridges because they’re places which have a utility regardless of whether you have money or not. When I take my kids on Metro rides during the day we see all human existence on the go.

“We also filmed near our old studio (we’re handing back the keys tomorrow after seven productive years!) and near our new studio and then we finished off near where my dad was brought up. It used to be one of the biggest council housing estates in Europe but it became a byword for Sunderland at it’s lowest ebb in the ‘80s. They renamed the streets (as if that would solve poverty and unemployment! Ha!) and then they started to knock it down bit by bit. But, you know, driving around there at night, you see that life still goes on. Normal people in normal homes getting by and doing their best while the street lights flicker on and off.”

Previously they shared a teaser trailer video for the album and its first full single “Count It Up,” which was followed by another song from the album, the six-minute flute-inflected “Time in Joy” (which was one of our Songs of the Week, as “Count It Up” would’ve been if we’d done a Songs of the Week the week it was released). Then the band shared the album’s third and final single, the three-minute long “Share a Pillow,” which is about co-sleeping with your child and was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Open Here is the follow-up to Commontime, which was released in 2016 via Memphis Industries. “Where Commontime felt like a distillation of all of the elements that make up Field Music, this feels like an expansion,” said David Brewis in a previous press release, “as if we’re pushing in every direction at once to see how far we can go.”

Open Here was recorded at the band’s own studio in Sunderland and also features the following musicians: Sarah Hayes on flute and piccolo, Liz Corney (Cornshed Sisters) on vocals, Pete Fraser on saxophone, Simon Dennis on trumpet and flugelhorn, and a string quartet of Ed Cross, Jo Montgomery, Chrissie Slater, and Ele Leckie. A previous press release described the album as such: “The result is a record that is bigger in scale, and grander than anything Field Music have done before. A lush and imaginative release that fits neatly into the lineage of late ‘70s and early ‘80s pop experimentalists like Godley & Creme, XTC and Todd Rundgren, while applying a sonic palette, production aesthetic and worldview that is distinctly forward looking.”

Field Music Tour Dates:

09 Mar, Bristol, The Lantern
10 Mar, Southampton, Engine Rooms
11 Mar, Exeter, Phoenix
15 Mar, Birmingham, O2 Institute 2
16 Mar, Manchester, Gorilla
17 Mar, Glasgow, Saint Luke’s
22 Mar, Liverpool, Arts Club
23 Mar, Sheffield, Foundry
24 Mar, Norwich, The Waterfront
05 Apr, Antwerp, Trix
06 Apr, Amsterdam, Melkweg
07 Apr, Paris, Flow
25 May, London, Barbican w/ the Open Here Orchestra

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.