Field Music - Making a New World review

The Guardian 80

(Memphis Industries)
The Brewis brothers’ concept album about the impact of the first world war brings left-field pop to topics ranging from skin grafts to period shame

This 40-minute, 19-song cycle about the aftermath of the first world war isn’t the most obvious commercial follow-up to Field Music’s glorious 2018 Top 30 album, Open Here. In fact, Making a New World was originally a commission for performances in the Imperial War Museum, but Peter and David Brewis felt proud enough of the resulting songs to release them as a concept album. The opening two short instrumentals evoke artillery fire on either side of the armistice: there are percussion sounds like falling bombs and mournful, Erik Satie-like pianos and eerie near-silences.