Gig review: Field Music, Oran Mor, Glasgow

OF ALL the current Mercury Prize nominees, there can be few as deserving of recognition as Field Music, the quirky gem of a pop group fronted by the instrument-swapping Brewis brothers, Peter and David, who share a natural talent for idiosyncratic male vocal harmony with their fellow Sunderland outfit The Futureheads.

Field Music

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Star rating: * * * *

However, those precision harmonies were briefly jeopardised at the start of this show when David Brewis announced that he could not hear himself through the monitors. Rather than foul-up one of the special attributes of this group, there was an impromptu instrumental break until they had technical lift-off; then his lithe voice chimed in beautifully for his part in Start The Day Right, a mini pop symphony which packs more musical ideas into three minutes than most bands can muster for an entire album, and functions as a cleverly compressed introduction.

Field Music can pull off such audacity without sounding cluttered or tricksy by anchoring every song – well, most of them – firmly in bright melody, before layering on the clipped, funky bass runs, sharply shifting time signatures, fuzzy analogue synthesizers, burnished Beatle-y guitar bursts and all the other goodness that makes this band such a feast for the ears.

They could still captivate when shorn of all the dynamic dressing. A fleeting a capella interlude with monastic overtones was tantalising, and Peter Brewis on solo piano would be a gig worth hearing.

But since they’ve got it, they flaunt it, drawing on the jazzier, King Crimson end of the prog rock scale for their rhythmic thrust but coming off compositionally like an angular Beach Boys or a 21st-century ELO shorn of the horrible hoary pub rock proclivities. There are more fancied Mercury contenders, but these guys are worthy wild cards.