The Week That Was is the second offshoot album from UK band Field Music, who are brothers Peter and David Brewis plus keyboardist Andrew Moore.

The Sunderland based group, formed in 2004, are one of the brightest hopes for British music. Their two albums of intelligent and unique pop music delighted both critics and fans alike, so it was to some dismay that the band announced their ‘hiatus’ last year. Although, cheeky monkeys that they are, the band were not splitting after all , merely persuing other projects. In fact the two albums produced since that announcement, School of Language‘s “Sea from Shore” and The Week That Was‘s eponymous LP, are essentially Field Music, with all three band members (plus others) taking part. It’s only in the songwriting department where things differ, with the former a collection of David’s songs and the latter Peter Brewis’s being the subject of this review.
Both albums contain material less immediately poppy and more experimental than that found on the Field Music albums, they are no less interesting and indeed offer more and more with each listen.

“The Week That Was” has more of a concept to it and is less guitar orientated than “Sea from Shore“. While Field Music’s influences range from XTC to White album-era-Beatles, this is very much influenced by the artier end of 1980s pop, artists like Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. Marimbas and Linn drums are dominant, whilst an airy string section helps heighten the atmosphere.

Lyrically this is a loose concept inspired by the novels of Paul Auster and Peter Brewis’s own experience cutting himself off from all media for a week, losing the fragments of information that TV, newspapers and the radio gives us and the feelings that this creates, letting yourself go uninformed. Each song is a musical moment, a fragment of a story we don’t know.

It’s a very ambitious album and confirms the bright prospect that Peter Brewis is as an arranger, producer and songwriter. Field Music may be over for the time being but they are far from being the band that was.

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