There are touts at the top of the steps at Brixton tube station, elbowing each other aside to greet the shoving, surging hordes with their muttered offers. It’s all very exciting. And it’s all for Bastille, who are playing at the Academy. ‘Twas ever thus, I suppose…but it feels like a particularly bitter injustice when arrival at the Electric for an evening with These New Puritans reveals a couple of handfuls of shuffling punters, bored bar staff and chilly draughts drifting around the empty spaces. It is not busy and it is very not warm.
Injustice, because it increasingly feels as if TNPs are operating in the sidelines, off in the undergrowth, and unnecessarily so. The venue’s filled out-ish with devotees by their arrival, but this is not the celebration that it ought to be. If I had to wager, I’d bet on this crowd being smaller than the one which saw them draw the curtains on the “Hidden” era at Heaven a couple of years back. Somehow, “Field of Reeds”, the year’s best album by a preposterous distance, has pushed them further into the fringes.
Perhaps so much has been written about the record’s supposed difficulty, its apparently impenetrable mixture of popular music you wouldn’t understand and classical music you’d understand even less, that the point has been missed altogether. Perhaps Jack Barnett sometimes doesn’t do himself any favours in interviews, or perhaps his more quotable moments don’t, at any rate. Perhaps critics find it easier to write about complexity than simplicity; maybe the rest of us fall into the same trap.
Perhaps we should just start again.
Because this needs to be said, I think: “Field of Reeds” is a beautiful record. It’s an utterly and unashamedly emotional record, full of swelling, flowering crescendos and delicate lulls. I find it almost impossible to listen to without welling up at some point, usually during the golden haze of “Organ Eternal”. It is abundant with melodies that are there to be enjoyed, to be cherished, to be sung. It is so far from an exercise in indulgent abstraction or impotent noodling; it lives in my heart wherever I go, it echoes around in my head when I cannot listen to it. I love it and it loves me.
And for all that “Hidden” was audacious and ambitious and sometimes utterly inspired – a colossal version of “We Want War” spirals upwards in choral waves here – I couldn’t feel the same about it. The comparison with Talk Talk is an apt one: for all that their late albums, particularly “Laughing Stock”, have become a touchstone for the left-fielders, those records are deep and rich and generous, hugely rewarding to listen to. They invite you to come close, then envelop you. “Laughing Stock” might get a “post-rock” label stuck to it most of the time, but it’s post-nothing in reality, a record in love with blues, jazz, soul, dub, rock and, yes, pop. “Field of Reeds” shares its lineage, its ambition and, above all, its generosity.
Some time after “Hidden”, Barnett, in one of his wonderfully decisive and usually misleading statements of future intent, declared that he wouldn’t sing on their next record. At the time, it seemed like a smart move: his voice was sometimes a weak link on “Hidden”, straining to match the grandeur around it. Now, you wouldn’t want that at all. In scaling back and creating music which draws you in rather than pushing you away, TNPs suddenly seem completed by Barnett’s understated tones; his is the voice which should be singing these songs, his songs. That transition underlines what makes TNPs so special now. Even at its most epic, this music has personal space, intimacy and gentleness.
Indeed, the theatricality of “Hidden” has given way to a sense of musical theatre in a more traditional sense. Yes, I know, I can hear your dismissive tut. But it’s nothing to sneer at: throughout these songs, there’s a clear sense of romance and of narrative; Barnett’s melodies entwine with those of Elisa Rodrigues in the most delightful duets, old-fashioned and stripped of any cynicism. In my mind’s eye, I picture Barnett wandering a stage, finding voice for his feelings in song; pop music has forgotten how to be this unaware, this unabashed. It’s too afraid of being seen to be foolish, too eager to drown everything in the wretched syrup of communal experience. “Watch the fireworks from the beach…” sings Barnett with a cresting soar, and we stand with him, lost in our own thoughts and dreams.
“Field of Reeds” is an album full of those moments, conjured from them. This is a night full of them too, genuinely magical at times. I have to say that I would give organs internal to see a full run-through of this record, an honour that “Hidden” received at the Barbican. It deserves that. They deserve that. It is not music that requires many words, not once you’re immersed in it and drifting with its tides. It needs little thought, little analysis. It’s beautiful and instinctive. We should treasure TNPs not because they’re clever and difficult, but because they’re unafraid to stand alone. And you shouldn’t be afraid either.
Ian Grant