Pitchfork

By now, the beaches of Sunderland, England, must be redolent with post-punk herky-jerky. To be sure, native sons Field Music have much in common with the Mackems that came before-- not least their members, who include one former Futurehead plus a current Maxïmo Park drummer-- but rather than assail us with angularity, the region's latest exports aptly prefer prettiness. Indeed, "You're So Pretty", their 12-song, 38-minute debut's art-pop finale, is the album's best track, and also its buzzing, ornamented, just-too-brief-enough synecdoche.

That song, like the album's other epiphanies, is a sparkling construct of whirring guitars, eccentric percussion, windmill-tilting bass, and Andrew Moore's piano embellishments. Dual lead vocalists Peter and David Brewis swap quixotic, often-falsetto harmonies as indebted to Pet Sounds as to "Hounds of Love". The lyrics tend toward the commonplace, which if not beside the point pretty much is the point: "You're so pretty/ I could talk to you all night", chime the Brothers Brewis, their sweet-nothings granted the wings of soaring melody.

Second single "You Can Decide" is the band's most immediately compelling track, with copious oohing, spastic handclaps, and eloquently stuttering chorus: "So if you know, you know, you know/ Let me." "Got to Write a Letter" benefits from slippery acoustic guitars and fairly sharp wordplay, though none as adroit as "I've given up thinking" from the album's rare sad song, the still-sun-dappled "Like When You Meet Someone Else". Opener "If Only the Moon Were Up" introduces a smattering of Revolver horn oompahs and GeoHa guitarisms ca. Abbey Road. I still say stupendous first single "Shorter Shorter" was, true to its name, the latter album's flip-side shortened, haunted and harried by imminent mortality. Meanwhile, the band's self-consciously complex, maximalist arrangements and Sparks- or even Yes-like vocal heights call up that suddenly-not-dirty (if prefixed with "hyper") word: prog. I'm just saying.

After their first two singles, it's hard not to be let down by good-enoughs like the ambitious, briefly cacophonous "Tell Me Keep Me", string-laden "Luck Is a Fine Thing", and staccato, saxophone-blearing "17". More ephemeral than Clor, more cerebral than the Rakes, Field Music has, like the Magic Numbers, fashioned a distinctive voice and near-perfect arrangements, but the songs hint at greatness nearly as often as they achieve it. Pretty is pretty nice, but the promise of true beauty makes tough critics of us all.

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