Field Music

From Sunderland in England, the indie art rock outfit Field Music built its reputation on precisely assembled pop melodies combined with an expansive approach that draws on multiple strands of rock. Led by brothers Peter and David Brewis, the group secured praise and a loyal audience through releases such as Tones of Town and the 2012 Mercury Prize-nominated album Plumb. Their interest in elaborate compositional and thematic undertakings prompted ventures including the scoring of a 1929 silent film and a collaboration with Britain’s Imperial War Museum on a First World War–centered work that evolved into the 2019 album Making a New World. The band further developed its atmospheric, prog-tinged style on the 2021 record Flat White Moon and the synthesizer-driven 2024 release Limits of Language.

The Brewis brothers, both multi-instrumentalists, formed Field Music in the early 2000s with periodic contributor Andrew Moore. Their intricate, melody-rich fusion of post-rock, prog-rock, and soft-rock elements initially invited comparisons to the New Pornographers and the Sunderland group the Futureheads, yet the sound remained distinctively their own. Memphis Industries issued the self-titled debut in 2005, which was quickly followed by the B-sides collection Write Your Own History in 2006 and the second studio album Tones of Town in 2007. The siblings then placed Field Music on pause to pursue individual work—David under the School of Language moniker and Peter as the Week That Was—while still appearing on each other’s recordings.

Reconvening as Field Music, the pair delivered the expansive double album Field Music (Measure) in early 2010. They soon returned to the studio for 2012’s Plumb, whose arrangements incorporated prog rock, synth pop, and funk and earned a Mercury Prize nomination. To support the record, the Brewises assembled a touring lineup that included Kev Dosdale and Ian Black. After the live dates concluded, the brothers again turned to separate endeavors, with David releasing the School of Language album Old Fears in 2014 and Peter issuing the Paul Smith collaboration Frozen by Sight the same year.

The hiatus proved brief; in 2015 Field Music produced Music for Drifters, the score for the reissue of John Grierson’s 1929 fishing documentary Drifters. That year the Brewis brothers also joined bassist Black’s band Slug to record the album Ripe and began work on their next Field Music project. Commontime, influenced by polished 1980s pop such as Hall & Oates, appeared on Memphis Industries in early 2016. Following its release the group embarked on its first U.K. tour in four years and made a brief visit to the United States. They further teamed with Warm Digits on the soundtrack to Esther Johnson’s documentary Asunder, which examined the First World War’s effects on North East England; the two acts, joined by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley, performed the piece with a string ensemble at the Barbican Centre in 2017. Peter Brewis contributed vocals to one track on Warm Digits’ 2017 album Wireless World and helped produce the Cornshed Sisters’ Honey & Tar that same year.

The Brewis brothers were already preparing the subsequent Field Music album at their studio beside the River Wear. Guests included Sarah Hayes on flute and piccolo, the Cornshed Sisters’ Liz Corney on vocals, Pete Fraser on saxophone, Simon Dennis on horns, and the regular string quartet of Ed Cross, Jo Montgomery, Chrissie Slater, and Ele Leckie. Memphis Industries released the resulting Open Here in February 2018.

Field Music’s following album, 2019’s Making a New World, originated in the Imperial War Museum commission and focused thematically on the era after the First World War. In 2021 the group pursued a less overtly conceptual yet still atmospheric blend of prog and pop on Flat White Moon. Returning with synthesizers at the core of the writing process, the band issued Limits of Language in 2024.