Fields: ‘Everything Last Winter’ review

By Adrian Yap

Rating: 9/10

As a genre, indie rock has probably reached the saturation ceiling. These days, anyone with a DD-2 pedal and a tight tee could eagerly profess to be an indie rocker. The constituents are never too different—lazy vocals, twinkling guitars and a 4/4 driving backbeat. This means that standing out in this pack becomes next-to-impossibly difficult. One tactic would be to carve out exceptionally new gimmicky niches from boring clichés (case in point, Arcade Fire’s crash helmets).

All of which serves to make Anglo-Icelandic band Fields’ debut album Everything Last Winter an immaculate, indietastic effort. There are no apparent gimmicks within sight, other than pretty keyboardist Thorunn Antonia’s long sinuous blonde locks. Yet there is something strangely captivating about Fields’ brand of indie rock, personified astutely by ‘You Brought This on Yourself’. The simmering staccato minor riff that plays out the verse is pretty by-the-book indie. But when the band launches into the classy chorus, there is something inherently charming about the blend between Nick Peill and Antonia’s harmonies, and the austere two-note riff playing in the background.

And that is the splendour of Fields’ music. There are absolutely no interminable music passages that lead into subjectivity, nor do they wave joss sticks at the god of Electro-Harmonix for that added gleam. Instead, they prefer to fall back constantly on their astute pop ears. The heartbreaking chorus of ‘You Don’t Need This Song (To Fix Your Broken Heart)’s features those Peill/Antonia harmonies yet again, this time melting onto a gorgeous bed of caramel-coated chords and a tinkling glockenspiel hook. It’s the kind of music moment that compels you to either whip out your hankies or lie under a blanket of stars.

Somehow, Fields have managed to sit comfortably on the fence between tube-driven indie rock and bedroom folk electronica without sounding neither punkishly desperate nor drudgingly sleepy. As such, Everything Last Winter is the type of record that revels in the utter grandiosity of long-dragging power chords as much as it coos in more intimate moments of folk balladry, with neither tangent appearing to have the upper hand. It would be hard to imagine this album not being on lists at the end of the year. Such musical beauty deserves universal acclamation and appreciation.

FIELDS - EVERYTHING LAST WINTER
(Atlantic/Warner)

Track Listing

1. Song For The Fields
2. Charming The Flames
3. You Don’t Need This Song (To Fix Your Broken Heart)
4. Feathers
5. Schoolbooks
6. The Death
7. You Brought This On Yourself
8. Skulls and Flesh and More
9. If You Fail We All Fail
10. Parasite