By Carron Stacey, A Humdrum Mum

WHEN?: Saturday 12 October 2024 at Pie and Vinyl record store, Southsea

Mr H has been a fan of Field Music for sometime now. I’ve been a fan for a number of years since we saw them at Victorious seven years ago on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

• Read on for reasons including an interview with Field Music’s Peter and David Brewis

They followed Dandy Warhols, and were followed by Pete Doherty, Soft Play, and Franz Ferdinand. I’ve loved them ever since; in particular their unique stop/start way of writing with a vocal that I could never want to do on karaoke because it’s so complicated.

Mr H and I also love the way they swap instruments for different songs. I’ve likened them before to the Beatles and Mr H’s father also shares that view, being a huge Beatles fan. It was our pleasure to watch them at a promo and signing gig in our local record store.

The brothers, Peter and David Brewis, are quiet individuals and self-deprecating in a way. They introduce a few tracks from the new album Limits of Language, and explain the background to them. It seems a running theme to sing about places where they grew up like Louis’ cafe for example.

They tell us that these songs have been translated into guitar-based songs for the promo tour when they’re actually recorded on synth. I decided I don’t want to hear the synth version, so intricate and beautiful are the guitar versions!

I could’ve stayed all day and listened to them chat, as if we’ve all been friends for years, just playing random songs from their albums. I feel it was an absolute privilege to be able to see them in this intimate setting. They were even generous enough to give me a little interview afterwards, where I asked them just how difficult it was to translate the synth songs from the album to guitar for the promo tour.

DB: “With great difficulty. You have to strip it down, what’s the important thing about it? Is it the rhythm? How much of the harmony can you get across? How much of the rhythm can you get across? Does it matter? And quite often, actually, it doesn’t matter as long as the tune is right. The feel is right. And then we just mess around.”

PB: “It was interesting playing all those songs on guitar and bass, because we never play guitar and bass together. It’s very rare. so I’m just like: oh I’m a guitarist for a bit, how do I have fun with it rather than it being this horrible ‘how can I translate this keyboard into a part for the guitar?’. It’s a bit of a laugh.”

DB: “How we play in the studio is not how we play as a band anyway, so there’s always this (element of) how do we make it right? How to translate that, represent the record live. With this (promo tour), we’re freed from that a little bit.”

PB: “You don’t have to represent the record. I figure, you’ll hear the record so you may as well have it slightly different anyway.”

It’s at this point that I admit that didn’t want to hear the album versions of the songs now, to which they reply: “We might record them like that!” Let’s watch this space!

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy A Humdrum Mum and Field Music Tickets
• Have you seen a Field Music show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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