| Plumb | ||||
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| Released | 13 February 2012 | |||
| Recorded | 2011 | |||
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| Length | 35:39 | |||
| Label | Memphis Industries | |||
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| Singles from Plumb | ||||
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Plumb is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Field Music. It was released by Memphis Industries on 13 February 2012. With 15 tracks over 35 minutes, the album consisted of short tracks that weave and intertwine together like an extended suite. This marked a deliberate departure from Field Music's previous double album Measure (2010), marking a return to the more fragmentary nature of the band's first two albums, Field Music (2005) and Tones of Town (2007). Plumb was nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize, much to the band's surprise.
Plumb has been described as a "melting pot of genres, influences, and styles",[1] incorporating elements from the funk style of Peter Brewis' side project The Week That Was, and the new wave and synth rock of David Brewis' School of Language. The songs on Plumb featured a wide variety of instrument combinations, from horns and strings to synthesizers and keyboards, as well as a great deal of falsetto vocals and sophisticated harmonies. The album featured interchanging time signatures, rapidly changing tempos, and sudden changes in tone and mood.
The lyrics of Plumb touched on several topics, including financial difficulties from the Great Recession and frustration with the state of politics at the time. Other themes included loneliness and nostalgia, everyday life for the British working class, and dissatisfaction with consumerism as well as other aspects of the modern world. The album title Plumb was chosen due to the various connotations based upon the word's definition of straight or level. The album cover and artwork involved a great deal of the color purple because of the rhyme between the words "plumb" and "plum".
This marked the first Field Music album without the band's former keyboardist Andrew Moore. Plumb was the first of five consecutive albums Field Music recorded in a new studio in Sunderland following the closure of a space the band shared for 10 years with the Futureheads. The album received positive reviews, and appeared on several year-end lists of the best albums of 2012. Several reviewers compared Plumb to the work of such artists as XTC, Pink Floyd, Yes, the Beach Boys, Todd Rundgren, Electric Light Orchestra, and the Beatles.