ARTIST: Field Music
TITLE: Tones Of Town
LABEL: Memphis Industries
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 215kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 31min total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-01-22
RIP DATE: 2006-11-28

Track List

01. Give It Lose It Take It         3:56
02. Sit Tight                       3:01
03. Tones Of Town                   3:05
04. A House Is Not A Home           2:36
05. Kingston                        1:53
06. Working To Work                 2:51
07. In Context                      3:37
08. A Gap Has Appeared              2:00
09. Closer At Hand                  2:29
10. Place Yourself                  3:01
11. She Can Do What She Wants       3:06

Release Notes:

Field Music covered a lot of ground in 2006. The trio from Sunderland have
performed in Berlin, in Milan with Belle and Sebastian and Barcelona, toured
France with Architecture in Helsinki and the UK with their compadres Maximo Park
and The Futureheads, the UK twice on their lonesome, including Reading and Leeds
Festival appearances, and the US where they were one of the surprise hits of
SXSW. They also found time to invent a dance craze (according to English tabloid
newspaper The News of the World), etch one side of a 7" with a list of things
you really shouldn't do but probably have, remix Maximo Park, release a
cash-in-b-sides album which gave a brief and inaccurate history of a slew of
pre-Field Music experiments. In addition the band also found time to record
their second album proper.

As with their eponymous debut, Tones of Town was self-produced. Recording took
place at their own Eight Music studio in Sunderland between 31st January and
16th May.

Where 'Field Music' was the sound of a group making the record they knew they
were capable of; dryly-produced, ambitiously skewed, multilayered pop which
gradually revealed its intricacies over repeated listens; Tones of Town sees
Field Music pushing and scratching at all of the boundaries implicit in their
debut; the sound of a band moving in several directions at once, searching for
ways to surprise themselves, taking risks and trying something new.

That could be the cut-and-paste beatboxing which concludes 'Sit Tight', the
stacked Day At The Races harmonies which lead into 'Closer At Hand', the tumble
from dreaming overlapped marimba into an undiluted joyous rock guitar riff on
the opener æGive ItàÆ or where the spiraling modular structures of the first
record reach their logical extreme on the title track. On 'A House Is Not A
Home' and first single 'In Context', Field Music could even be described as
'funky', albeit in a peculiarly singular avant-mackem way.

The album does though have a (possibly unintentional) unifying theme. Something
along the lines of "There's no place like home, but how come I don't always feel
'at home', and what does that mean anyway?" Lyrically, Tones of Town, presents
itself as a collection of missives from a generation who don't want to complain
because they're well aware that they've never had it so good, but who
nonetheless feel somewhat dislocated; geographically, socially, personally, from
each other, from their jobs, from supermarkets, from indie music and from
television.

In December, prior to the release of the album, and to further dislocate
themselves geographically, Field Music will head out on a Tour of Towns,
avoiding cities and the regular metropolitan gig circuit. It seems like the only
appropriate thing to do. They are from Sunderland after all.