vintage

Oh man, I have so many posts to write! This one’s a bit late in coming, too, so the others are going to get bumped back a bit. Sorry … I’ve got Lazy Blogger Syndrome lately, it seems.

Anyway, if you’ve been reading this blog since the get-go you’re aware of my great love for Field Music. While they are quite regrettably on some kind of band hiatus (a concept invented mainly to torment music fans), the members are still keeping themselves busy with other projects; School of Language is one of these. Mainly a solo venture for guitarist David Brewis, the School is a tight power trio on the road, and rolled through Toronto last week for an excellent set at Sneaky Dee’s.

Kicking off the show was Toronto outfit Pants and Tie, delivering a rollercoaster set of tunes that spanned a myriad of genres. Vocalist Mark Colborne belted and squeaked and hollered his way through the night, supported by excellent sampling, keys, guitar and bass work by the remaining two musicians. Some of the songs were a little off the mark (due in large part to arrangement), but when they were on, they were really on. A highlight was “Little Bird,” available for your listening pleasure on myspace.

Next up, another Toronto band by the name of The I Spies. I’ve seen them before, supporting indie-pop favourite Small Sins (some songs on their new record are co-penned by Sins’ frontman Thom D’Arcy); that was a great show, but nothing prepared me for this. I’ve rewritten this paragraph ten times and they all sounded like pretentious indie music reviewers who inject adjectives everywhere to make themselves sound good, so all I’m going to say is, they were spot-on. Every song. As some people would say, they “rocked my face off”; comparisons could be drawn to the Who at their best, and “In the Night” was absolutely fantastic. At the end of their set I kind of felt like just sitting there and staring, because it was so unexpectedly ON. I’m definitely making a point of seeing them more often. I picked up their new album, released March 11; so far, it’s just as good.

And finally, the band of the night … Sunderland’s School of Language, quirky and awkward and absolutely fantastic. David Brewis - a man who could use a good sandwich - recorded the SOL’s debut album Sea From Shore by himself, playing all the instruments and sequencing everything with a laptop. Consequently, it sounds deliciously weird and choppy, and occasionally disjointed; however, the two musicians he’s taking on tour with him ironed out the songs well, translating them admirably to a live setting. “Disappointment ‘99″ and “Poor Boy” sounded exactly like the Futureheads when performed on stage (not surprising, as his brother and fellow Field Music member Peter Brewis was among the original members); “The Rockist” bookended the set, and a Roxy Music cover featured somewhere in the middle. Requests for Field Music and Tortoise covers weren’t honoured, but for the best, likely; Sea From Shore provides great material on its own and Brewis is sagely trying to distance himself from the other projects he and SOL members have been previously involved with.

Brewis himself is a talented songwriter and guitarist, but a very humble and softspoken one; a very British “thank you very much indeed” followed every song, and conversations with him post-show yielded slightly shy acknowledgments of compliments, both from me and other people in the audience. He seemed almost reluctant to agree that Sea From Shore was a great album, but was quite excited about having been able to schedule a date in Toronto; “another gig in Pennsylvania or Ohio would really just have depressed me!”

They may not be Field Music, but that seems to be Brewis’ objective; to show that yes, there are other things he can do. Of course there are countless similarities, but School of Language seems a bit more open to experimentation and doing things that might just be called “weird” in the prog-pop frame. And with a talented group of musicians like that, they can very well do so. We need more of you, David Brewis; come back soon.