Uncooler-than-thou

By Hazel Sheffield

Field Music recorded their first album ten years ago in a little studio called 8 Music, located in a former colliery in Sunderland. Their unusual time signatures, staccato guitars and sax stabs felt brilliantly geeky compared with the indie-pop output of their peers, the Futureheads and Maximo Park. When 8 Music lost funding, Peter and David Brewis, the brothers behind Field Music, moved to an industrial unit on the banks of the Wear, taking the curtains with them in order to retain the same acoustics. While the indie scene of the early 2000s withered, Field Music, who never cared much about it in the first place, continued to release albums. They never bothered the charts but stunned the critics, earning a Mercury nomination for their fourth album, “Plumb” (2012).