Fields Everything Last Winter by: Steve Scully Tue:04-Dec-07 Label: Atlantic Year: 2007 WB rating 67 out of 100

The best thing about Everything Last Winter is the accompanying illustrations. Divided into chapters, with a haunting, surreal sketch on every other page (Dave Dragon, the illustrator, has churned out some terrifyingly intricate landscapes displaying bastardised human forms intermingling with nature), the booklet contains lyrics and a contents page, and immediately Fields’ nostalgic bark threatens to be far too blusterous for any bite to match.

Initially, Everything Last Winter, sporting charming anachronisms in both appearance and lexicon – see their use of words like ‘toil’ and ‘revelry’ – can perhaps be seen as a more grungy counterpart for a band like Midlake. With pastoral imagery and the aforementioned nostalgic bent, Fields exhibit a great deal of conflicting elements: acoustic, harmony-driven parts are offset by quasi-metal screeching guitars and pummelling rhythms. Opening track, ‘Song for the Fields’, characterised initially by the hooky nature of the vocal melody, is Fields’ paradigm. Strummed acoustic and harmonised vocals are layered many times over; it begins with an inkling of folk, but continues into a power-chord adorned foray into the off-beat hard rock genre.

The vocal melody, on second listen, isn’t far off those Maynard’s making, and even the repeated lyric – “You’re not the only one” – is reminiscent of his many bands’ cynical faux-revolutionary moments. At a tick under six minutes in length, and with the predictable second-wind assault after a dynamic drop in the mid-section, this track exhibits the enormous production value behind the album and the band’s well-honed ability to craft an epic hard-rock number. It also lays the ‘we’re important’ cards on the table. The hook is there, but hooky the track is not; instead it’s too self-indulgent to bring in the pop-listeners, and too-obviously a crack at a certain market to be indie-credible. But this is only the first track.

Fields’ trademark, it seems, is their mix of the attractive, aesthetically pleasing vocal harmonies and sonically pungent heaviness. The vocal melodies are at times utterly gorgeous: ‘Charming the Flame’ offers up a very catchy chorus, but the softness of vocal delivery is engulfed by the veritable size of the arrangement. The band’s sheer power is so blatant and unrestrained that one might suspect that the vocals were only multi-tracked for the pragmatic reasons, so they could be heard amidst the swell. ‘You Don’t Need This Song (To Fix Your Broken Heart)’ is a rare moment of ‘soft touch’ (despite the incongruously overwhelming drum presence), with flutes often joining the beautiful female vocal harmonies, adding another voice behind the potent little line: “Sing this song like another one/ ‘cause they’re all the same.” With folk-tinged subtlety, Fields’ quietest track is Everything Last Winter’s most resounding success.

‘Skulls and Flesh and More’, in Everything Last Winter’s waning second half, is another example of their painful inconsistency. The lyrics are again questionable, anachronistic turns of phrase: “Come and stake your claim/A lord said to his pain” and there is a curious Grandaddy-esque synth affair that emerges in the intro only to be brought back again underneath the minimalist guitar solo, which again puts Fields in the Midlake region. The dual, male-female melody is reminiscent of Montreal bands Stars or The Dears, and it is a brilliantly controlled track showing their gall as much as it does the possible genius. While the vocals are graceful and the rather macabre imagery quietly and effectively evoked, subsequent track ‘Feathers’ sees the female vocals take on an Evanescence-like lameness, and ‘If You Fall We All Fall’ descends into anthemic wankery amidst a storm of pretentiously loud and over-wrought guitar playing.

Although grandly executed and well-crafted, Fields’ music for the most part leaves a listener cold. The ultimate reason for this is not the unnecessary instrumentation, the over-used distortion pedal nor the increasingly boring vocal effect from which the band barely departs; the reason is that despite the occasional melodic slap in the face, there’s nought but a handful of listen-worthy songs here. Falling victim to the ‘if this was an EP, it’d be far better’ curse, Everything Last Winter is moribund by its mid-point, and dies a slow and uninspiring death due to repetitive, formulaic songwriting. Not terrible, but by no means fantastic, this album is only half-done: it’s a shiny product, but one whose actual substance needed a little more time to ferment.