New Music: Fields, Matthew Dear

Between you and me, I was really, really hung over when I wrote the second paragraph in that Juho Kahilainen review. Like, more hung over than I've ever been in my entire life. I'd finished everything up to that point before I went out on an all-night drinking binge that ended when I passed out sometime around dawn on Wednesday morning (or that's what they tell me). Anyway, I gave the review a look on Wednesday afternoon and decided I couldn't write because I was still feeling ill. When I finally came back with a cleared mind and settled stomach, I finished but it wasn't pretty. Juho, if you're reading: I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. Next time I'll try harder.













Fields - Parasite (Atlantic 2007)

Fields - Everything Last Winter / Atlantic

The point is that sometimes when you go away from something you were really excited about and you come back only to find that words have failed you, your instinctive reaction is to examine how you've changed. In Kahilainen's review, that added up to several glasses of cheap champagne and limoncello wreaking havoc on my liver. In the case of Warwickshire quintet Fields, there's definitely something different from the last time we made acquaintance... But it's not from my end. This is a different-sounding band and I'm not entirely sure it's for the better.

The reason NME, NPR, et al jumped on the Fields bandwagon last fall was because of a series of singles and EPs that were neatly collected on 7 From the Village, the tunes that would eventually pave the way for the band you hear now. The unusual coupling of freak-folk weirdness and Brit-rock traditions was especially prevalent on songs like "Sisters" and "Heretic," and my enthusiasm was apparent when I heard the boys (and one Icelandic girl) had finally made their way out from the wilderness in April. Only one of those seven made it to the big city: Opener "Song for the Fields" has been redone (again) and though it always promised big-folk bombast as much as any folk song could promise bombast, its full realization here has been markedly polished from early incarnations. Appropriately, it sets the tone for the rest of Everything Last Winter.

Even the small songs sound big here. If you need a reference point, Marc Hogan gave you about 800 in his review on Pitchfork earlier today. I try not to link to other reviews as I sometimes feel it's a crutch, but in this case Hogan's got it right on several accounts: There's a lot of Brit-stad(ium) in this album that is indebted to bands like Snow Patrol and the whitewash of The Cooper Temple Clause or Lush as well as conventional strummers like Pete Yorn. "If You Fail We All Fail" was a UK-only single that survived the change of years too, but it's a good example of that merging of sounds on a grander scale, a larger stage. If you're looking for pure guitar rush, "The Death" is your only option. Situated smack-dab in the middle of the album, "The Death" acts as the fulcrum and the balance between the rock and the folk that so dominate their sound.

I want to condemn this album, take the easy out and blame it on the label and on the polished sound producer Michael Beinhorn achieved and the band for not taking more chances in song structure and melodic delivery. But everyone seems to be condemning Fields right now as a Travis knockoff or yet another British group somehow indebted to the rotting corpse of a Radiohead that died over a decade ago (RIP, for heaven's sake). That is a mistake. This band is far from finished. Okay, maybe the Atlantic bidding war got to their egos or maybe they just thought they'd settle for a ton of mid-tempo pop-rock ballads that will fit nicely on [University student]'s iPod playlist and pay the bills for at least another release... But you can still hear shades of a Fields people thought they knew last winter. "Feathers" plays with just a hint of electronics before the inevitable squall takes over around four minutes. "Parasite" wraps up the song with a cello and the acoustic approach that everyone apparently was expecting. It's a beautiful closer and, I think, an open door to the future. They understand that the songs don't all have to sound the same.

You can't deny that these songs have been touched up; indeed, most of this album has been available in one form or another for several months. In a cruelly ironic way, crystallizing the sound might just be the thing separating this band from critical greatness. Isn't that pathetic? That the same set of songs with dirtier production can be more acclaimed than if the production is better? It's like rock fans are trying to reverse decades of audio technology to give some kind of authenticity they couldn't produce themselves because they weren't alive in the late 60s and early 70s... But then, I'm the guy writing about it. I never said I wasn't pathetic too.













Matthew Dear - Vine to Vine (Ghostly International 2007)

Matthew Dear - Asa Breed / Ghostly International

One segment of the music-listening populace that would beg to differ on the point of production are the electronica listeners... And anyone who recognizes Radiohead from 2000 onward. These people are all about headphones and big speakers and what was that sound? and I think I just heard Matmos's sperm on that one. Matthew Dear knows what they need and with his latest album Asa Breed, he's delivered the goods. Except not in a Matmos way, you know. Clean. For the kids.

I was even more excited for Matthew Dear than I was for Fields. It's not like I've been following the Detroit tech-house wizard for ages or anything. I mean, hell, I barely even heard Leave Luck to Heaven or Backstroke or that Fabric comp he did last year under the Audion moniker (Fabric sets never did anything for me unless I was there, though, so that may have something to do with it). But I was given the hot tip on Asa Breed in early March and rightfully so as this has proven to be one of my favorite electro albums this year. We knew this was going to be good when "Deserter" hit the bins on May 8th, sounding every bit the Bowie impersonation he'd explored on earlier material or maybe something more akin to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts + Give Up. There's nothing wrong with that, but "Deserter" isn't the highlight of this album. Dear's deadpan vocals may turn away people obsessed with hooks, but the music is just too strong to deny this time.

Dear writes quickly and so the theme of "abstractions of human relationships" didn't emerge until after the 13-track album was already completed. And yet there it sits sticking out like a sore thumb in the midst of the microsounds of tracks like "Elementary Lover" or "Will Gravity Win Tonight." While Dear expounds on love in the sometimes indecipherable vocals, the music emanates with both love from inside the womb and the stale machinations of what lie beyond. This is a record you can listen to both in the middle of a Swedish forest and in the glow of the fireplace at a ski resort with a cup of hot chocolate to keep the hands occupied. Seems mysteriously out of place being released in June, but when that heat beats down on you come July and you've given Asa Breed a fair few spins, remember what it's like to feel cool. I mean, not just James Dean cool. Fucking cold. So refreshing to have a record that isn't confined to one particular mood or mindset. Example: The two best tracks bookend the record. On one end, "Fleece on Brain" opens up sounding an awful lot like "Get Innocuous!" but still banging so brilliantly it can only be considered in the top tier of '07's dance tracks. The Airy "Vine to Vine" wraps things up at the other end with a monotone meditation on the record as a whole. I went with that one because you'll more than likely already know the dance songs by the time this whole thing passes over. Just don't forget that great albums show versatility even within the walls of a one-trick pony.

Like all great electronic music, Dear is able to make music that serves a ton of purposes. Maybe those are sleighbells on "Death to Feelers" and maybe they're just salt-shakers at the hot dog stand in the wake of another win for Kobayashi (Gotta put something on the fries, after all). Maybe these vignettes on figuring out love are windows into the man behind the music, or maybe they're just abstractions dreaming of a different way to do Berlin. Whatever the case, Matthew Dear is back at the top of his game. Or put another way: Never again will he have to worry about the legacy of "Dog Days." I'll drink to that.