Fields – ‘Everything Last Winter’ (Black Lab) Released 02/04/07

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got an ego the size of The Twang or you claim to not care what people will think about your album because it’s only ‘the fans’ opinion that really matters (Kaiser Chiefs) - every band feels pressure at the end of the day. Pressure to win a few more plaudits, pressure to hold on to the plaudits you’ve already got and pressure to, dare we say it, simply earn a living. It’s a feeling that Fields – another band from 2006 trying to prove that they’re worth the hype in 2007 - should be quite familiar with by now.

Since their formation as a garden shed pipe-dream, Fields have certainly come a long way to arrive at the release of their debut LP, ‘Everything Last Winter.’ A number of high profile support tours with amongst others, Bloc Party, as well as the release of a flurry of impressive and acclaimed singles which have preceded the LP’s release, means that there’s a distinct pressure to perform here. And perform they do, well, almost anyway.

Whilst an Anglo-Icelandic band on paper might sound like a quaint prospect, as ‘Song For The Fields’ gets the album underway – a song which initially sounds distant but eventually explodes gloriously - it’s clear Fields aren’t exactly the ‘quaint’ band we all thought. There’s distinct venom that runs through their music, which at times is exposed through dark, twisted electronica (‘Schoolbooks’) and others through a tougher, heavier rock edge (‘The Death’).