Field Music – “Beyond That Of Courtesy”

Field Music – “Beyond That Of Courtesy”

Next month, the UK art-pop crew Field Music will come out with the new LP Making A New World, a concept album about the longterm historical consequences of World War I. (They are not changing their name to Battlefield Music for the purposes of this record, even though I think they totally should.) We’ve already posted the early tracks “Only In A Man’s World” and “Money Is A Memory.” Today, they’ve shared another new one.

The oblique and spindly new song “Beyond That Of Courtesy,” like the other songs we’ve heard, is about a specific postwar phenomenon: The Inter-Allied Women’s Conference, an international event that promoted the idea of women’s suffrage after the war. Leaders of the movement met in Paris in 1919 and eventually were allowed to make a presentation to the League Of Nations. It was the first time that women were able to formally participate in international negotiations.

You won’t get all that from the song itself, which is an eccentric piece of jangly guitar-pop music. But in the material surrounding the song, which is part of the package here, Field Music make a connection between that conference and the decades-later elections of world leaders like Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Margaret Thatcher. Listen below.

Making A New World is out 1/10 on Memphis Industries.

more from New Music