speed of dark

Nick Peill and Thorunn Anton of Fields shoegazing at the Troubadour

I didn't know anything about Fields when Indie Mom and I got our tickets for the Dears. I had time to grab four MP3s that had been posted on other blogs and burn them to a CD before I got into the car. Listening to these cuts on the way over to her house, I was surprised to find that I liked all four of them. I'm pretty picky, and it's unusual for me to like any random four songs of any group, Radiohead excepted.

In my research to find out more about Fields for this post, I found that the band is only around a year old--another surprise. The songs are of consistently high quality, and they play very well together considering they are such a young band. They have a lovely flash website at fieldsband.com, but you can see that things are beginning to happen kind of fast for these guys because their News hasn't been updated to announce their latest EP.

There are no big innovations here, nothing ground-breaking. Just sweet, fresh melodies of consistently engaging quality. Guitarist Nick Peill's and keyboardist Thorunn Anton's vocals blend appealingly. Peill, lead guitar Jamie Putnam and bassist Matty Derham create a nice layered sound, with Anton's keyboard smoothing out the mix. It's a standard shoegazer sound, but it's done very well, and hey--I LIKE shoegazer.

The band's sound stands up well live, but they could use a little bit more stage personality. Thorunn did talk a little to the crowd during an enforced break to reconnect power to her keyboard. Hopefully she'll do that more in the future even when she doesn't have to.

Their latest EP, 7 From the Village, which was released Sept 2006, is available at Amazon. Mine is in the mail to me right now. Los Angeles and San Francisco, both opening for the Dears, were their only two U.S. dates and the band is currently touring Europe, but they expect to begin working on their first full-length release soon. If it follows in the footsteps of this EP, it could be very nice.

Tracks from 7 From the Village:

Fields: Roll Down the Hill
Fields: Heretic

Tracks that will probably be on the upcoming debut album:

Fields: Charming the Flames
Fields: Feathers

Check out their page on MySpace for news, current tour info, pictures, and downloads. And check Indie Mom's review of the Dears below to see if she has any of those cute Fields stickers left. She took some pretty good photos with her cell phone, don't you think?

Also, Youtube has a Video of Brittle Sticks, from the EP: