“A lot of modern guitarists want to get all the notes right but if you listen to Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, it’s beautiful playing, with loads of mistakes”: Peter Brewis on Field Music’s ‘collage rock’ – and why he owes his career to Robert Zemeckis

At an in-store performance at Monorail Records in Glasgow, Peter Brewis is bending his fretting hand into some origami-like shapes. Minor second clusters bloom into open-ended 11th chords, flying out from his red Strat with chiming bravado.

Field Music, the Sunderland, England-based band he fronts with his brother David, are here celebrating their ninth album, Limits of Language.

Led by ear-worm tracks Six Weeks, Nine Wells and Guardian of Sleep, it features their singular brand of what they’ve called “collage rock” – imagine ’80s King Crimson making Rubber Soul with Prince producing.

Their latest is synth-heavy. Hence the origami. Brewis is copping keyboard parts. Aside from both being strong singers, he and David also jump fearlessly from drums to keys to bass to guitar.

“I don’t know if I’d call myself a multi‑instrumentalist,” Brewis says, “but I will say I have no shame when it comes to trying things out.”

Six Weeks, Nine Wells - YouTube

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Brewis discovered guitar at age eight, through the Johnny B. Goode scene in Back to the Future. “I owe my entire career to Robert Zemeckis,” he says with a laugh. As he became more serious about learning the instrument, he approached it “like an artist using gesture drawing” – favoring action and spirit.

“I think a lot of modern guitarists want to get all the notes right,” he says. “But if you listen to Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, it’s beautiful playing, with loads of mistakes – full of gesture, swing and groove. It’s unpredictable and dangerous. That’s what excites me.”

Field Music favors “the gestural” in their songwriting, too, to help transcend influences. “We may start with a very direct influence – like on this album, we told ourselves, ‘We’re Led Zeppelin making In Through the Out Door’ – but then let ourselves not get it quite right. It’s more about capturing the essence.”

Field Music - No Pressure - YouTube

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Brewis’s go-to guitars are a Fender Aerodyne Strat and Gordon Smith SG, with P90s (“I like that Richard Thompson bite,” he says), through a Deluxe Reverb or Vox AC10. His favorite pedal is the Strymon Deco Tape, which “does a really nice tape saturation.”

In their 20-year career, Field Music has had chart flirtations and a Mercury Prize nomination. But Brewis admits that making records in Sunderland’s geographical remove may limit them to cult status. “But if what we do appeals to people who really like music, then we haven’t wasted our time. That’s really all we can ask for.”

• Limits of Language is out now via Memphis Industries.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.