Venue:
Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
Date: 21/02/2020
I finally, at the third attempt, got to see Field Music live. Despite the best attempts of the weather to close major roads, and the resulting three hour drive, we made it with 15 minutes to spare.
Emma Pollock (ex-Delgados) came on with just a cellist as her third band member was stuck in Dundee. She did a Delgados tune and Paper and Glue from her first album, one from each of her second and third, a new one, and a rather good cover of John Cale’s Paris 1919. She was alright, engaged with the audience, but her guitar style suits having a band behind her.
During the interval I managed to track down @smudger and @bobness (who, it turns out, had been standing directly behind me) and then David Brewis came on stage to warn us we were going to hear the new album in sequence in full, followed by the hits.
What I hadn’t realised is the pulses at the start of the album are actually bombs exploding and it was loud and a bit frightening. The songs were excellent, and the audience (bar one noisy twit) stayed engaged even during the instrumental segues. The projections were fantastic and really added to the post World War theme of the album.
A quick breather then onto the hits. The Noisy Days Are Over, Disappointed, A House Is Not a Home (from second album Tones of Town), one from the You Tell Me album (with keyboardist Sarah Hayes on vocals), one from David Brewis’ solo funk-Trump concept album 45, one encore, and off into the night we trooped.
The audience:
Many shiny pates. Are 50-something men the only people who can afford to go to gigs, or are we the Field Music fanbase?
It made me think..
I wish the Nottingham one-way system was better sign-posted (big arrows to Rock City would help). My second visit in three months and, even with SatNav, I found myself driving into a bus-only one-way street.
All the Afterworders I have met are lovely.
I wish the lads from Sunderland would come a bit further south.
Great to meet up with @fentonsteve after my A Certain Ratio no show at the back end of last year.
It’s a first for me to hear an album played live in its entirety so soon after its release. I thought bands only did that sort of thing to celebrate an album’s 20th anniversary (my only experience being Jane’s Addiction playing Ritual De Lo Habitual a few years back).
Anyway I’m glad they did what they did although the prior warning was probably a good idea for those in attendance, me included. Great visuals to go along with the music and a top evening all round.
I shall have to dig out the Donald Trump concept album.
Nice one @fentonsteve .
I’d never really had Field Music on my radar at all until Smudger tempted me, but they are now. Tremendous stuff, from a top notch band. As has been said, some excellent visuals too, proving that you don’t need megabucks to enhance the experience.
A thoroughly splendid night out, worth the drive from Edinburgh earlier in the day…
Standing in the bar before the gig started I noticed men drinking beer from half pint dimpled glass beer mugs. Is this now A Thing again? Like they’re Derek Wilton in the Rovers Return?
Anyway, great gig. And just the right length.
I hate to be a pedant but isn’t FM’s current keyboardist called Liz? I saw You Tell Me at Moseley Folk Festival last summer and while I’m not familiar with their album, it was a different woman on keys and vox.
I have never liked drinking from dimple mugs. Ugly, clumsy things.
Supposedly mugs with handles, such as the dimple are preferred by some real-ale purists because the beer doesn’t get warmed by your hand, as it does by drinking from a sleever, tulip or nonik glass. A genuinely thirsty person’s beer is not going to remain in the glass long enough to have it’s temperature affected.
I seem to recall that the staff in the bar downstairs at The Lexington would serve ales in mugs unless you asked them not to, but lagers etc. were served in sleevers.
A bit poncy if you ask me.
Normally it’s a student bar, so I’m guessing it’s a hipster thing.
You could well be right about the keyboardist. Since when did we allow pedants on the Afterword, eh? She was obviously enjoying herself, whatever her name is.