indy cd & vinyl

FIELDS—7 FROM THE VILLAGE 

The Fields, a 5-piece Anglo-Icelandic outfit, are barely a year old, having performed their first live gig in early 2006. Their debut 7-song EP, however, sounds completely confident and mature. While certainly a rock album, 7 From The Village also incorporates a rural,  English flavor in its approach. Filled with multiple vocal harmonies (4 of the 5 members sing) and rustic as well as electric instrumentation, each of the groups songs tend to evolve from pastoral beauty into rocked out guitar pop.  Bittersweet lyrics are wrapped around English folk melodies and dollops of 60s psychedelia, along with 90s Britpop.  Urgent, but not antagonistic, hazy but cut with crystal-clear jangle-pop guitar lines, laid-back but with a drummer who propels the band with multi-rhythmic precision, the Fields field a number of contradictions. These musical tensions yield immediate dividends with the opener, “Song From The Fields”. Beginning with rapidly strummed acoustics guitars and gorgeous vocals, the band builds into a psychedelic rave-up with a great beat and multiple layers of guitars. The result is both unique and compelling, beautifully marrying their “medieval” folk aesthetic with a well-developed rock sensibility. The following tunes generally follow this pattern of starting with soft, delicate, textures that evolve into guitar-driven psychedelic epics, all enhanced by their unerring ear for superb vocal melodies. A full-length is to follow shortly. If it is as consistent as this, the Fields hold promise for being a ‘career band” of significant note.