You Tell Me - You Tell Me

The Guardian 80

(Memphis Industries)

Peter Brewis of Field Music and Sarah Hayes of Admiral Fallow met at a Kate Bush celebration show and began working together with the intention of him producing her. That their collaboration evolved into a band is cause for a little midwinter celebration. You Tell Me is a record of countless pleasures, one that manages to jump between different points without ever sounding jumpy for the sake of it. It’s delightfully eclectic rather than irritatingly restless.

The opening track, Enough to Notice, is a bit of a red herring: direct and four-to-the-floor, poppy but in the sense that Teleman are poppy, rather than in the way Little Mix are poppy. But the impression at the end of the album is that you’ve been listening to a folk record, which comes from the strength of the largely acoustic tracks – Foreign Parts, Springburn, No Hurry, Jouska and Kabuki – and from Hayes’s gorgeous, lightly accented voice. There are hints of Fairport Convention, too, in the glorious Clarion Call, which offers one of pop’s most appealing sonic combinations – slide guitar and a woman’s voice – and elements of systems music in the skittering keyboard patterns of Invisible Ink.

Fri Jan 11 10:30:08 GMT 2019

The Guardian 60

(Memphis Industries)

Stunned by the musicianship of Glasgow band Admiral Fallow while performing at a Kate Bush tribute gig in the city, Peter Brewis recruited their folk-rock flautist, Sarah Hayes, to appear on his band Field Music’s excellent 2018 album Open Here. Now, on this full collaborative effort, tentative bridges between the itchy rhythms of Hayes’s 2015 solo album Woven, which set traditional lyrics to her new arrangements, and the folky tendencies lurking among Field Music’s jagged prog pop open up into fertile vistas of common ground.

With a shared love of artists such as the Blue Nile, Rufus Wainwright and, on the rich, prog-tinged Foreign Parts, the aforementioned Kate Bush, these are mature, classy songs. They’re also abuzz with the thrill of a bright new musical friendship, audible in the confidences Brewis conjures on the punchy Watercooler, or Hayes’s unburdening of private griefs on the radiant, string-swept Springburn. Invisible Ink beguiles with staccato, needling keys unfurling into an expansive chorus, while Get Out of the Room invokes the nervy funk of Talking Heads. Kabuki, meanwhile, showcases the clarity and emotive power of Hayes’s voice, which throughout mixes well with Brewis’s fey tenor as first one then another steps into the spotlight.

Sun Jan 13 08:00:11 GMT 2019