YOU TELL ME

Folky Field Music side project talk fun, feelings and freedom.

After meeting at a Kate Bush celebration gig, Admiral Fallow vocalist Sarah Hayes and Field Music’s Peter Brewis got on like a house on fire. Discovering a mutual love of The Blue Nile, Tortoise and Randy Newman among others, their subsequent collaboration takes strands of those interests and fashions them a short but content-rich album. Filled with off-kilter rhythms and ravishing stringwork that nuzzles close to the heart of their songs, the purity of Hayes’ singing has an unadorned confessional quality that’s utterly engrossing. Some of its motifs are reminiscent of Hayes’ exquisite 2015 solo album, Woven, which offered a beguiling take on folk rock. That strength is also present here but complemented with a quirky pop dimension that echoes some of Brewis’ inventiveness within Field Music’s world. Get Out Of The Room is typical of the sparse but well-chosen production. Finger-snapping rhythms, growling Mellotron brass, taut guitar, and whipcrack snare gradually accrue around a joint vocal that’s initially passive but becoming increasingly acerbic as the narrators pick at the scabs of their respective resentments. Songs that deserve to be heard.