Field Music Bring on the Double

Maybe it's an innate northern English buoyancy, or the fact that the country's cold snap is finally starting to thaw, or maybe it's genuine enthusiasm at the prospect of answering (another) set of questions, but Field Music's singer/multi-instrumentalist Peter Brewis sounds uncommonly cheerful for an over-the-phone interviewee. He is one brother in a band of two (David Brewis is the other singer/multi-instrumentalist), and he speaks about Field Music with the kind of fervour one would expect from a band who have just come back from a three year hiatus, except the Brewis brothers' definition of "hiatus" seems to wildly contradict with the Oxford English.

In what must be post-punk's closest equivalent to Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, the brothers Brewis have spent the last three years on the road with a solo album each (using the titles School of Language and The Week That Was respectively, collected under the banner of Field Music Productions), all the while joining in on each other's recording sessions, touring groups and promotional duties. But they're officially back as Field Music, and, just in case anyone was about to accuse them of achieving nothing on their gap year, they have a double album in tow, titled Field Music. Sorry, that’'s Field Music (Measure). Or is it just Measure?

"I don't even know what it's called anymore," Peter feigns a moment's exasperation, before realising he genuinely can't clarify, for himself nor the press, the title of his band's new album. "It was meant to be self-titled, but because the first record was also self-titled, the label persuaded us to include Measure [a title taken from one of the album's many highlights] in there too. It's not on the artwork, but I think it's the proper title now... I can't believe we've put out an album and I don't know what it's called!" Having a noble stab at justifying the confusion over the title, Peter hastens to add: "Peter Gabriel self-titled his first four albums, but his American label didn't like it and made him give them all proper titles."

Though the preceding titbit might seem like your average pub talk trivia, the inspiration of Peter Gabriel looms heavy for the players in Field Music, and as Brewis starts to reveal the driving influences behind Field Music (Measure), it becomes apparent that both the decisions to write a double album and to self-title it were born out of a desire to embrace the influence and evoke the spirit of the rock records of their youth. "We're less embarrassed about our love of loud rock music than when we first started. Back then we wanted to be very composed, very... measured, you could say."

The band's debut single, Shorter Shorter, released in April 2005, was a textbook example of buttoned-up art-punk, channelling a David Byrne that wasn't burning down the house but rather putting out fires with due diligence. Talking Heads' legacy is still a strong one on Field Music (Measure), but Peter explains: "Tones of Town [released in 2007 immediately before the band announced they were taking a break] was all about one cohesive style, whereas this record as a whole really deconstructs our influences - this time around we thought 'Field Music has a sound. It's the sound of our room, the way we record, the way we play and sing, but let's see if we can hold all that together while taking inspiration from all over the place."

And they really do mean all over the place. Among the names that start to roll off his tongue are David Bowie, Prince, and Eric Clapton (just have a swatch of Each Time Is A New Time's opening riff; for a few bars it's as if Cream got back together and weren't charging you silly money to see it), bound together only by their disparity. "The unifying theme me and David had when we started out [writing the new record] was, because the previous records had been quite short, 'Let's make a really long album, and it has to be a double album', but as it progressed we started to become invested in that old Brian Eno method: 'What would John Coltrane do?' or 'What would Stravinsky do?'" he begins, then clarifies - "except in our case it would be 'How can Field Music be funky?' or 'How can Field Music be bluesy?' It's a good trick for thinking outside yourself."

So was the time apart key to this new approach? Peter takes a second to mull it over: "The new record's more collaborative than anything else we've done probably because of the solo records, because we've accepted we both need space to realise the things we want to do. I want Dave's and mine's songs to be as good as possible but we realise there's certain things we can't do and need the other person for. It's the verification process really, now when Dave has an idea for a song I think 'How can I help write the song he wants to write?'"

All this talk of renewed sense of purpose and passion for collaboration begs me to ask the inevitable: so what was the motivation for taking a hiatus in the first place? "We were just tired of playing the indie music game, with Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs," for the first time in the interview, Peter sounds deflated in his response. "I don't even listen to indie music really, so things like NME and MTV2 didn't matter as much to us. If we were going to have success as Field Music, we'd prefer it be success on our terms, rather than being a third division indie band." Though his disdain for the "indie music game" is audible, Peter's agreeable demeanour goes unchanged as he relates Field Music's ultimate reunion: "We'd been touring for a year and a half as School of Language or The Week That Was - we'd each amassed a lot of ideas over that time. It was really just the right time to get together and record them all."

The result is a double album in the purest form: two distinct sequences of tracks that Peter insists "shouldn't be listened to all in one go", despite how inviting that proposal may be. "Put one side on for 20 minutes, have a cup of tea or something like that, then flip over to the next one. It's got to be listened to on four sides or two discs; it just makes more sense that way." He isn't wrong, though there's something to be said for how easy it is to get through in one sitting - it rather niftily sidesteps the usual clichés of the double-disc set. Rather like the man Peter in conversation, with Field Music (Measure) there's no pretensions, meandering, or filler to be found; here every sentence and song counts as another worthy addition to the Field Music Productions catalogue. And with five outstanding albums to their name, they're not only a success on their own terms, but a success on anyone else's too.