On this indie pop EP, the Cape Town singer and guitarist generates warmth by pairing innocent inquiry with bright instrumentation.
The rollout for Matthew Field’s debut EP has been, above all, verdant. Since March, the Cape Town native—and lead singer/guitarist for the South African hit pop rock trio Beatenberg—has been issuing singles, each accompanied with a winsome collage of greens and blues. Each of the five tracks has also received a video treatment featuring Field in the outdoors, engaging in activities both mundane (taking a dachshund on an off-leash forest walk in “Fiona”) and quixotic (pushing an iceblock towards the beach as it melts in “Gargoyle”). Throughout these quirky yet determined tasks, he remains as stone-faced as a silent-era comedian. The warmth generated on M Field EP comes as much from the artist’s resolute pondering as it does from the bright instrumentation that surrounds him.
Propelled by Field’s soukous-inflected playing, the record flutters and keens. If you squint you can make out Vampire Weekend—largely due to the shared guitar lineage—but Field doesn’t share the Americans’ interest in footrace tempos and snare raps. His arrangements fizz but never bubble over; they reflect a mind running hot, turning over thoughts while seeking shade. “And I wait for your call/Then let myself fall/From the height of the day,” he sighs on “Ten Is a Number,” over an intricate mix of timekeeping handclaps, piano roll and sparkling guitar. The hazy, Mellotron-led “Leafy Outlook” (also the name of his label) paddles on a twangy ostinato and drum machine patter. The narrator despairs of being stuck at the same address, arguing with the same people. The combined effect is like overhearing someone’s glum monologue while tubing a river; you keep waiting for the scenery to shake them out of it, and surprisingly, it actually does. Overlapping voices babbling about the recording process suddenly appear, capsizing the boat and breaking the narrator’s reverie. However, tranquility returns as the narrator resurfaces, singing vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys.
It’s playful, perhaps a bit deadpan—like the EP as a whole—and thus a worthy project for London-based producer Nathan Jenkins. Over the last year, Jenkins has helmed a number of throwback art-pop efforts, both under his Bullion alias and for other artists like Orlando Weeks, Joviale, and Hayden Thorpe. On “Gargoyle,” Bullion and Field cushion a failing relationship (“If you’re a Gorgon/I’m a gargoyle,” Field sings, not unkindly) for impact: dicing a piano figure across the stereo field, summoning a bass cloudmass only to disperse it with a funky synthline, and providing another bridge potentially focused on the recording process: “Pulling on a string/To make it sing/You got to strain/To make it work.”
On the EP’s bookends, Field counsels his friends on how to make their relationships work. In “Andrew,” he urges one friend to go it alone; in “Fiona,” he advises another to stay attached. Each song is nimble and bright, and both pair emotional certainty with a hazy sense of place. The mind is running hot again, and visuals spin out: subway tiles, a lie by the lagoon, two shadows on a rugby field. If you take these songs as conversations to decode, his elliptical approach may frustrate. As a peek into another person’s mental process, it’s charming.
And it does seem telling that the song about going solo is Field at his loosest. On “Andrew”—the arrangement for which has the melodic dexterity of Peter Gabriel—Field chases the refrains by scatting alongside his genial guitar line. “The horn of plenty,” he counsels Andrew, “you’ve got to blow it now.” Beatenberg released their last LP in 2018; in a July interview, Field said that the band was still active, but noted that each member was currently in a different city. In time, we’ll know if this EP represents the first break for greener pastures, or simply a head-clearing stroll. Regardless, this brief excursion suggests that Field has brilliant corners yet to turn.
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