Making a New World

Aside from a few great moments like the warm and accessible track ‘Beyond That Of Courtesy’, this listen does feel slightly hard to grasp due to its disjointed nature. There are enough ideas in the tank here, but ultimately it's not one to rush out and buy.

Where it stumbles as a concept record, it only sometimes succeeds as an art-rock record. As it turns out, an important idea does not an important album make.

These enigmatic narratives work well--the themes can be unearthed at one's leisure, immersed in music that's both poignant and delightful. [Feb 2020, p.88]

Despite these occasional moments of divergence and experimentation, fans will be pleased to hear that the album is still peppered with quintessential Field Music bangers.

Unfortunately, as a musical portrayal of the long-lasting echoes of WWI, its ideas are far more interesting than their execution.

Keeping the raw emotion of a war that killed an estimated 40 million people out of the equation likely helped Field Music get their job done, but a touch more sentiment would have gone a long way toward taking this album beyond its research project roots.

There’s a familiar, overriding sense of a couple of guys reading something about history and having a lot to report. If you don’t mind the idea of These New Puritans as your dad after a Ken Burns binge, you’ll find signs of life and creativity within Making a New World’s overall confusion. If not, no one could blame you for moving on.

In other words, cramming so many short observations into roughly two-thirds of an hour does a disservice to their potential. On the other hand, that quick pace gives the album a level of intrigue, momentum, and unity it wouldn't have otherwise. In any case, it's a wonderfully appealing, daring, and intellectual accomplishment that should please anyone looking for notably challenging and smart pop/rock.

Making A New World resonates with hidden meaning and lost connections. [Feb 2020, p.111]

An ambitious concept album about the aftermath of World War I. Even if you don’t feel the need to follow along with their historical lyrics, these 19 short songs are an entertaining, unpredictable listen.

Songs segue into each other as war is considered from unusual angles.

Fans of Field Music will be absolutely overjoyed with this set, and of course, fans of '80s art rock will be in their element. Those put off by the unwieldy concept ultimately have nothing to fear – the WWI themes are completely ignorable, and so disparately connected that the only reason you’d ever know they were there was if somebody told you in advance.

While the elastic basslines of the Talking Heads-indebted Only in a Man’s World and Money Is a Memory stand out, Making a New World works best as a single piece of music, not least because some of its interstices are too fragile to stand unaided.

It’s a spun-out, pastoral journey that attempts to unbox and contextualise the ‘now’ within the history of twentieth century Britain, after the end of the First World War. And yes, be warned, it only folds out to reveal itself at a careful walking pace. So you’ll need to buy in and have patience to get rewarded by its – real and significant – qualities.

Everything that grooves here (over half the album, which clocks in at 19 tracks) is great and makes you want to see the band live. The rub? Making a New World is a song cycle about the after-effects of the First World War.

Rather than act like temporary caretakers tiptoeing around WWI's vast, eternally resonant themes, Field Music have sensibly moved in and made them their own. Not a memorial, then, so much as a remix of history. [Feb 2020, p.24]