Album Review Field Music - Tones Of Town

22nd January may be already instilled in your pop-pilfering minds as the day The Shins album first promised for Autumn ‘06 finally gets its release. However, we’re stuck on something just as special, yet far closer to home. Viewers, 22nd January also marks the arrival of the latest album from Sunderland pop sorcerers Field Music.

Where ‘Give It Lose It Take It’ builds up in to a clapping/harmony/synthesiser mash, ‘Sit Tight’ has heartfelt trail offs and bouncing intro lines. With strings adding a lustre to juttery delights such as single ‘In Context’, there are layers of loveliness to spare.

And those keys in ‘A House Is Not A Home’? Overlapped by even more strings?! Only an ace introduction to one of the hookiest hooks we’ve heard in a long while! ‘Working To Work’ should be a summer anthem before the clouds have dumped the last of their gloom with its half-Ben Folds half-Phoenix leanings, and if ‘Closer At Hand’ isn’t one of this year’s best loved tracks someone deserves a good kicking. Opening with obligatory ‘woo oohs’ and a simply wonderful bridge, it’s 2 minutes 29 seconds of moreish melody.

Regaining the synthesiser from the ‘nu rave’ rabble and making radio-worthy gubbins that isn’t what we not-so-affectionately know as ‘tramp rock’, Field Music are spoiling us. Simply, magic.