Album Reviews

Co-produced by founding band members Andrew Futral and Rachel Browne, “Hold Still Life” is Field Mouse’s first album that’s been written and released as a full band since bassist Saysha Heinzmann and drummer Tim McCoy joined the line-up back in 2010. You could say that it has been a long time coming and well, you’d be right.

Listening to “Hold Still Life”, I quickly found out there’s nothing particularly squeaky about this Field Mouse. Combining elements of shoegaze, dream pop, indie rock and power pop, these boys and girls manage to whip up some snappy songs. Opening duo “A Place You Return To In A Dream” and “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” sound like a Breeders and Sonic Youth mash-up that immediately made me like this band. Sweetly rocking with fuzzy guitars and vocals that made me think of Juliana Hatfield. Then in comes “Two Ships” with more of a dreamy vibe a la Silversun Pickups and won me over completely.

From there on the band keeps shifting effortlessly between rocking tunes like “Everyone But You” and more introvert tracks such as “Asteroid”. It’s like they derive some sort of perverse pleasure from first lulling you with dreamy sounds only to then catch you off guard with fuzzed up guitars. Bastards!

Four years is indeed a long time in between releases but if it’s a guarantee to deliver an album this good, I’d advise other bands to do the same thing.