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Fields: Everything Last Winter

28th March 2007 | by Aidan Williamson

Somewhere, a guitar starts up, rather discordantly. Then embarks a furiously strummed melody and another guitar stabs in Ska-style.

Shortly two very luscious voices enter the fray.

It sounds urgent, it keeps on building intensity. Around this time, your realise; there are no drums, at that split second they hit you right in the stomach. Thus begins the adventure of “Everything Last Winter”. The band exploded into the public consciousness last year with the release of the superb, wicker-man inspired video for “Song for the Fields”, their debut single. The video itself, was so good that it took a few views before realising there was a world class song providing the soundtrack. Certainly, this band have more buzz surrounding them than a honey pot.

It's a relief to say then, that they do not even come close to disappointing on their first full-length. Every track sparkles with rich, textured melodies, only broken when the band decide to undercut it with the musical equivalent of a chainsaw. Generally speaking, the sweeter the melody, the harsher and more urgent the instrumentation. Boredom isn't an option here, and each track eschews any kind of standardised structure and teeters along like a runaway mine train with various instruments stepping into the spotlight, stabbing into the song with a perfectly contagious melody, before bowing out, never to be seen again. When you for a brief moment you think you can see where this train is headed, you realise that someone has gone and switched the lines on you.

Rarely is a foot misplaced throughout the (almost) fifty minute journey, although track 9 “If you fail, we all fail” stops this release from getting perfect marks, having been accused of not quite being up to the standard of the rest of the album. More than counterbalancing is the aforementioned lead single “Song for the Fields” as well as “The Death” (you can tell the band are a fan of contrast, since the gloomier the title, the cheerier the song sounds) and “You brought this on yourself.” Special mention also goes to 'Thorunn Antonia', the remarkable vocalist, who takes the front stage on the latter half of “Skulls and flesh and more”. It would be nice to hear more of her on the next album, although that may just because I'm a fan of her previous band “The Honeymoon”.