Matt Westcott talks to David Brewis, of North-East band, Field Music, about their new album, Plumb

FIELD Music? They’re too clever for their own good, one of my colleagues said when told I was about to speak to one half of the Sunderland duo.

Far from being a put down, it was meant as a compliment and anyone who has heard of them will no doubt concur with his description.

David Brewis, who performs alongside his brother, Peter, laughs when told of my friend’s assessment.

“It’s not an uncommon comment about us, to be honest,” he says. “I think it’s because, early on, we set ourselves this rule to make the kind of music that we would want to listen to. We have been involved in making music for 15 to 20 years. It would be incredibly dishonest to pretend we are like the average punter. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

David says he and Peter had to make music for those who think the same way that they do.

“I think it would be a shame if that meant there was no emotional heft to what we do, but because we are always trying to find the subtleties and ambiguities in things we are never going to make a weepy song, we are never going to make a jumping up and down mosh pit kind of song because that’s not what music does for us,” he says.

“We are quite analytical people and we would just be kidding ourselves, and everyone else if we pretended that we knew the secrets to chart pop.”

Plumb is Field Music’s fourth album and is further bolstering their reputation among music’s intelligentsia.

Released earlier this month, it consists of 15 songs all wrapped up in a succinct 35 minutes. An eclectic bunch of tracks, it is nigh on impossible to put a label on it, other than to describe it as multi-faceted, richly-layered and hugely worth a listen.

“In part it is a reaction to the last record which came out as a double vinyl and CD and was 71 minutes long with 20 tracks,”

says David. “For that record we kind of embraced rock conventions to a certain degree. We were rediscovering our childhood love of Led Zeppelin and Free and made a record that was almost like normal rock. This time around, we really didn’t want to do that again.

“Both me and Peter write quite a lot of pieces of music which don’t lend themselves to becoming three-minute pop songs. They are pieces of music that seem complete in themselves, and it would be quite contrived to try and stretch them out.

“This time round, we feel that provided we structure the album right we can find a way to make these miniature pieces of music work. There are three songs that are about a minute long and a couple just under two.

“In a way it’s quite anachronistic.

We both love albums, I don’t think we have particularly embraced the iPod world or the iPod shuffle. I like to be able to sit down with something for 30 or 40 minutes and become immersed in it.”

It follows then that Plumb is best listened to as a whole rather than in random segments.

“We always struggle to find singles, but there are a couple of songs on there that work okay outside of the flow of the record,” says David. “For us, though, we always think about it as being an album.

“We generally structure albums in terms of vinyl sides.

There’s only one gap really and that’s where on the vinyl you have to switch over. That’s the format which brought us to music really, the format that gets me most excited.”

For more information visit field-music.co.uk