The Southend band’s Field of Reeds seems to have polarised opinion – while NME started a ‘Field of Reeds: amazing or shit’ blog thread on their website, the Quietus put These New Puritans’ latest offering at the top of ‘tQ Albums Of The Year So Far’. It’s not really surprising. After Hidden’s (2010) broodingly nihilistic hooks – especially the orchestral ‘We Want War’ – FoR’s flightier introspection seems incongruous at first with many of the songs ostensibly plodding in their musical progression, and oppressingly indirect. And yet it only takes a couple of listens to uncover the sheer beauty of this album, and to understand the flawless care with which it has been crafted.
In an interview with Laura Snapes on Pitchfork, songwriter Jack Barnett was asked about FoR’s composition and creative processes. Barnett anecdotally boasted about the precision and attention to detail that he gave to every single sound on the album – including the procurement of a hawk to make some kind of shrieking sound in the studio – in the name of authenticity. Obviously it would be easy for the characteristically cynical British music press to mutter ‘wanker’ under their breaths – many have – and brand him as a pretentious prick. Then they would rail against those who put too much effort into ‘rock’n’roll’ and probably do a ‘Top 10’ feature of others who share that fault, with a couple of iconoclastic names like Lou Reed and Thurston Moore thrown in too. But Barnett should be praised for his meticulousness, for putting his art above the commercial gain (relatively, for a band of TNP’s stature) and for doing what he thought was right for them.
This is admirable, particularly when he is so vindicated by the excellent results. Although tracks like ‘The Light in Your Name’, ‘Nothing Else’ and ‘Dream’ might initially seem frustratingly opaque, they are piano-driven melodies hewn from an exquisitely obsidian neo-classical stone. They are intense songs with startlingly intimate vocals, but it’s an elegant intensity. The tone is refined and sanguine rather than crushing or harsh – perfectly demonstrated by the title track ‘Field of Reeds’. There’s a duality at work here: the song builds up on a surfeit of crushing drone before subsiding into optimistic string instrumentation. It’s a testament to Barnett’s ability that the interchange between dark and light is pulled off so marvellously well. Then there are the wide sweeping tracks like single ‘Fragment Two’ and ‘V (Island Song)’ that glory in their epic ambition, compelled onwards by memorable piano riffs and other surprising instrumentation like the trumpet from famed British jazz musician Henry Lowther. FoR is full of unique collaborations like that: conductor Andre De Ridder manages the orchestral parts, Swedish soundtrack arranger Hans Ek provides the lush depth and Portuguese jazz singer Elisa Rodrigues furnishes the record with a feminine innocence –memorably so on the Herb Alpert cover ‘This Guy’s In Love With Me’. The highlight is ‘Organ Eternal’, a repetitive high-tempo number in thrall to a strivingly hopeful kind of electronic/piano groove (I can’t identify it for sure, maybe it’s the magnetic resonator piano – a comparatively recent development in piano electromagnets… or something like that). The distorted voice screeches in the middle are so unexpected and so perfect – Barnett (and friends) has the courage to insert an atonal noise bit and the nous to know where to put it. That talent is displayed throughout the tracklist: though there are unconventional song structures and odd noise segues in every song on FoR, each is held together by some thematic glue. The whole album is just a spectacle, something that demands to be listened to – this is not background music.
The genre box on the Wikipedia page for FoR describes the album as ‘neo-classical’ and ‘art-rock’. Whilst a book could be written on the redundancy of labels, those (understandable) tags do imply a pretentiousness that is often perceived to accompany a challenging piece of music. And yet the record’s brilliance undermines those naysayers who decry creative fastidiousness. What cannot be doubted though is TNP’s artistic courage which carries them above and beyond their peers. That is what makes Field of Reeds such a satisfying listen –they aimed high, yes, but achieved.
Field of Reeds came on June 10th, released by Infectious Music. Below is the bleak music video for ‘Fragment Two’.
By Barney Horner
