School Of Language - Sea From Shore (Memphis Industries)
UK release date: 4 February 2008
track listing
1. Rockist part 1
2. Rockist part 2
3. Disappointment '99
4. Poor Boy
5. Keep Your Water
6. Marine Life
7. Ships
8. This Is No Fun
9. Extended Holiday
10. Rockist part 3 (Aposiopesis)
11. Rockist part 4
Casiotone bonkersness, artsy intentions, a
Sunderland indie-elite line up ... yes, Field
Music are back. Or one of them, anyway, under the
name School of Language. The rest of the collective is
in the wings, shoring up the project and providing the
bedroom production.
Field Music - one of last year's most interesting
and unrelentingly indie of bands - have not gone away,
you understand, but their individual members have gone
solo(ish), and this is the first of several promised
efforts from their component parts - in this case
David Brewis. In place of his brother Peter and Andrew
Moore, this time he's brought along a variety of local
indie pop luminaries including Barry Hyde and David
Craig of Futureheads and Kenikie's Marie
(Du Santiago) Nixon to help him out.
And they get off to a good start. Rockist part 1 is
a robotic lo-fi synth fest that recalls the same bits
of Denim you can hear in Brewis's previous
offerings. With Rockist part 2, the same tune goes
industrial, as if the little toy robot that could has
wandered into the steelworks to have its innocence
stripped away and replaced by heavy guitars and
factory crashes.
The result is playful, dark, optimistic and
doom-laden all at once, firmly ensconced in a musical
almost-genre Northern bands such as Maximo Park
and The Human League have long made their own,
all poptastic on the surface but with something much
deeper behind it. This is helped in no small part by
the lyrics - which are sometimes discernible,
sometimes just loops used as another instrument.
In places, the album is lush, recalling the
heaviness of 70s prog-pop such as Fleetwood
Mac, particularly on middle tracks Keep Your Water
and Marine Life; a couple of tracks on, and you can
hear the influence of Wings in the mix too. The
varied styles and experimental feel of Sea From Shore
works well, holding your interest from one track to
the next as it darts through genres and music history,
taking the best bits and remoulding them into
something new.
All in all, Sea From Shore sounds enough like Field
Music that it sweetens the bitter pill of that band's
(semi)-demise. Its enduring cleverness is that its
beats and harmonies get more optimistic and uplifting
as the album progresses. By the time you reach the
end, and parts 3 and 4 of the Rockist quartet, there's
a sense of hope, as if the crashing darkness of part 2
can be escaped. The music has become more organic, the
little robot has gained a human voice and a heart and
has ventured out of the cold, dark city to a look for
a lovely summer festival at which to have his next
adventure.
Pretentious? Mais oui, mes amis, but with a
self-knowing quality that means you'll let it off.
Make two beautiful albums, break up, and leave a
string of clever solo projects behind you. Other bands
take note: it's a winning formula.