When Field Music gave us a Progress Report a few weeks into recording their third album, David Brewis noted:

I’ve been rediscovering my teenage love of the Black Crowes’ third album. There’s going to be something to offend everything on this record. That’s the plan.

Who knows if they succeeded in said plan, but the brothers Brewis have returned from their post-Tones Of Town hiatus with a fury, offering up the 20-track double album Measure. Beyond the black Crowes, they also told Jessica their time apart in School Of Language (David) and The Week That Was (Peter) had honed their songwriting and playing skills. Take a listen to the lilting string-lined title track to see if you agree with any of the above.

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NAME: Field Music
PROGRESS REPORT: Recording their third full-length LP, working title Field Music III, at their studio/rehearsal space in Sunderland, UK.

Field Music released two records of quirky, smart, pop music, and a sound that separated them from friends like the Futureheads. And that was a problem. Brothers Peter and David Brewis resented having to write songs that fit the Field Music sound, though this constraint was self imposed: “It wasn’t like there was any pressure from outside to conform to what we’d already done. The plus side to not selling any records is that the pressure’s not there,” David says. “But it was enough to think, ‘I don’t want to write songs imagining how the three of us are going to play it. I want to write whatever I need to write right now.’” He couldn’t write on tour either. So in 2007 Field Music announced that they were finished. David released his first record as School Of Language, and Peter released his as The Week That Was in 2008. But David played drums on Peter’s tour, and he says they still worked or recorded together often. Even David’s month-long US tour wasn’t the break he thought it would be. “I was thinking, thank God, a whole month away from Peter. But then I got home and wanted to give him a big hug and talk about music,” David admits.

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Early this year we highlighted School Of Language, the solo project of Field Music’s David Brewis. David’s FM bandmate and brother Peter is busy with a new band, too. They’re called The Week That Was and recently released their excellent self-titled debut, conceived as an information age crime drama. Peter was the original drummer of the Futureheads and carries elements of their angular post-punk to his current work, but TWTW’s best moments are gentler, darker. The lean riffs and tumbling percussion that kick off LP opener “Learn To Learn” recall Drums and Wires-era XTC with a Tortoise-y marimba track thrown in. Its Gavin Wood-directed video matches the song’s anxiety via frantic, repetitive cuts from students, soldiers, and an atomic bomb to a tower of TV screens broadcasting close-ups of the song’s squirrely-looking singer.

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