Fields, a new indie/prog/pop band out of the North of England, traffic in acoustic balladry haunted by ghosts and dressed up with healthy doses of driving distortion. The group garnered a fair amount of excitement from the British press surrounding their single, âIf You Fail We All Failâ and an accompanying EP last year. The bandâs brushed themselves up and polished off the edges for their debut full-length, Everything Last Winter. The polishingâs not all bad, though, as it clarifies the groupâs vision of creating complex, prog-inspired folk songs for an industrial life.
If thereâs a theme that runs through these alternately sweet, alternately hard-churning songs, itâs the idea of pastoralism undermined by industry. Behind every acoustic guitar arpeggio are the swirling ghosts of prog-guitar effects or the twitter of insects — even these are inevitably broken down into mechanical churns of industrial noise. Fieldsâ MOA is fairly straightforward, and fairly constant across Everything Last Winter‘s songs — opening with acoustic arpeggios, songs build into hearty Tool-style choruses or extended codas. The difference between the bands, though, is in main vocalist Nick Peillâs layered boy-band harmonies. In this heâs aided by keyboardist Thorunn Antonia, who effectively blends in the high end and may make you fall in love with the band for, well, non-musical reasons. A typical, and well-executed, example is âYou Donât Need this Songâ, with its trumpet, glockenspiel-like keyboard effects, and pastoral interlude overtaken by the sound of airplanes — as if directly rebutting Get Cape. Wear Cape. Flyâs assertions over simple folk, Fields is profoundly depressed: âSing this song like any other on, âcos theyâre all the same⌠A simple songâs not enoughâ.
Well that line could be descriptive of the one major downfall of Everything Last Winter, too. Namely, and understandably given the rigor with which the band sticks to its scary vision of postmodern life, the repeated songwriting formula becomes predictable, and loses some of its power. When the band tries to flatten out songs into more straight industrial rock (as on âThe Deathâ) or even radio rock (on âYou Brought This On Yourselfâ), the momentum quickly drains — though in that latter song thereâs one great line whose outward sweetness masks a brutally callous intent: âIf you think youâve been left on the shelf / I know that youâve brought this all onto yourself.”
Itâs in their softer moments, and when the band fully embraces its prog leanings, that their full potential opens up; the results are effective and, occasionally, even thrilling. âSkulls and Flesh and Moreâ expands leisurely over the course of its five minutesâ length, opening with a complex interplay of acoustic sounds, a steamship-beat and twittering bird-calls, and backing up its hefty chorus with a heavy drone. âCharming the Flamesâ does the same, and primarily works because it avoids obvious melodic tropes on the opened-up, sinister chorus.
If this ’90s-style love of prog strikes you as retro that may be true, but Fields obviously doesn’t care, and the style generally fits their outlook and songwriting style. And better this than AC/DC again, right? Again, you need patience for this kind of music and a proclivity towards the prog end of the spectrum, because the extended breakdowns and looped themes can seem at first monotonous. Nonetheless, by the time the band indulges they’ve earned the right to, and as listeners we donât begrudge them that. Itâs a solid effort.