Field Music - Write Your Own History
[Memphis Industries]

Opening with their most recent recording since last year's debut album (the single You're Not Supposed To), this is an album of unreleased tracks and b-sides. An unusual choice for a second album - bands don't usually resort to this sort of filler until they're a few albums and a strong obsessive fanbase into their careers.

You're Not Supposed To is as jaunty and jangly here as it was a few weeks ago, and is a cheery opener to the album. In The Kitchen is a downbeat piece of melancholia. The dark lyrics, embraced by the soft vocals, and backed by high-pitched oohs and ahhs and menacing guitars, describe a wealth of sorrow. The song begins to soar just when you think it's over, with all the ache of letting someone go.

Trying To Sit Out opens with folky guitars, building through pounding drums, yearning violins and a tragedarian piano line. It feels like a demo rather than a song.

Breakfast Song is Sgt. Peppers-era Beatles. Lennon-esque vocals, Eleanor Rigby violins, heavy plucked bass, unsophisticated drumming. Another one that feels like a brief idea that couldn't be taken any further.

Much of this album is like that. The songs run backwards in recording date order, and to someone who wants to know all there is to know about Field Music, it's probably an interesting album. It's just maybe a bit previous to have released it now. It doesn't set them apart, or make you think “Wow, this is really something.” It's a curate's egg.

Having said that, I'm Tired is a gem. Skittering drum machine rhythms, bass high in the mix, dubby synthesised kick drum, and twinkling keyboards combine to make this the sort of quirk that sets Field Music apart from their immediate contemporaries. Almost everything else on this album is recognisable as out-takes that didn't make the grade for the debut album, but I'm Tired is the track that makes wading through the other stuff worth it.

It's not that the other stuff is bad, per se, just that b-sides and rarities are usually those things for a reason, and putting them on an album doesn't raise them above that status.

Alternating Current is apparently the song that made Memphis Industries want to sign the band. It's a rattling hybrid of The Beatles and Flaming Lips. The label wanted it on the first album. The band was right that it didn't fit. Again, not a bad song. Just a precursor to where they are now.

A mixed bag, then, and probably only for the really keen.