Field of Reeds - These New Puritans (2013)

It’s hard to describe These New Puritans in general because they straddle several very different genres. It’s also hard to describe this record specifically because it’s quite a different creature than the band’s other releases.

Starting with 2008’s Beat Pyramid, the band launched themselves as nerve-wracked post-punk: big drums, angular guitars, and earnest and emotive vocals.

On their 2010 follow-up, Hidden, they kept the intense attack but started to add in more choral vocals, string arrangements, more brass and woodwind instruments, and more variation between driving attack and calmer interlude.

Field Of Reeds is a continuation as well as an evolution. The post-punk drums and guitars are almost entirely gone. What drumming is left is much more texutural and underneath the increasingly subtle arrangements. The song structures have also exploded into much more widescreen affairs, with bits of melody drifting in and out of the calm but firm instrumental parts.

There are two releases after this one that start to lean back into the beat-driven, rock-oriented end of what they started as. But the footprint and the shift in what they see as possible is firmly in place.

This may end up being the mellowest and most idyllic of These New Puritans’ releases, but it’s also an important watershed moment towards what would come after.

RIYL

While the music itself isn’t super similar, These New Puritans are following a similar career track to what Talk Talk did in the 80s and early 90s.

Starting as a conventional rock band, and expanding their horizons until they were nearly unrecognizable as a group only a few years later.