Four stars
On their recently released sixth album proper, pop-funk brethren Peter and David Brewis unleash a torrent of textures upon their latest exercise in masterful songwriting and orchestration. Where its predecessor Commontime brought a new emphasis on percussion, Open Here maintains the rhythmic momentum while pasting liberal dollops of flute, horns and whatever else comes to hand on top.
The admirably autonomous Brewises’ solution to replicating the density of the record is simple – they rock up numbering eight, yet frequently it sounds like 18. On material from their back catalogue the augmented line-up brings new vigour to songs which were already sufficiently nuanced to entertain even the most jaded listener, but where the extra musicians count most is on the half-dozen songs from Open Here, which vary tonight between grandiose and monolithic without forgoing an ounce of subtlety.
Hence Goodbye to the Country, Checking on a Message and Share a Pillow respectively kidnap echoes of Tears for Fears, Michael Jackson/XTC and Thin White Duke-era Bowie and magnify them tenfold, the last song meshing Pete Fraser’s saxophone with the jagged guitars of Peter Brewis and Kev Dosdale to deliver a thunderbolt of 24-carat funk.
Edged by keyboard players Liz Corney (who takes the lead vocal on a sublime Just Like Everyone Else) and Sarah Hayes (also of Admiral Fallow and doubling as flautist), Field Music revisit older songs such as Them That Do Nothing (from Measure), A House Is Not a Home (Tones of Town) and It’s Not the Only Way to Feel Happy (the surprisingly downbeat closer, taken from their eponymous 2005 debut), but it’s Commontime and Open Here that bring out the best in them, namely a devotion to late 20th-century pop that’s as lean and taut as the brothers themselves.
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