School Of Language - Sea From Shore (Memphis Industries)

Field Music - one of last year's most interesting and unrelentingly indie of bands - have not gone away, you understand, but their individual members have gone solo(ish), and this is the first of several promised efforts from their component parts - in this case David Brewis. In place of his brother Peter and Andrew Moore, this time he's brought along a variety of local indie pop luminaries including Barry Hyde and David Craig of Futureheads and Kenikie's Marie (Du Santiago) Nixon to help him out.

And they get off to a good start. Rockist part 1 is a robotic lo-fi synth fest that recalls the same bits of Denim you can hear in Brewis's previous offerings. With Rockist part 2, the same tune goes industrial, as if the little toy robot that could has wandered into the steelworks to have its innocence stripped away and replaced by heavy guitars and factory crashes.

The result is playful, dark, optimistic and doom-laden all at once, firmly ensconced in a musical almost-genre Northern bands such as Maximo Park and The Human League have long made their own, all poptastic on the surface but with something much deeper behind it. This is helped in no small part by the lyrics - which are sometimes discernible, sometimes just loops used as another instrument.

In places, the album is lush, recalling the heaviness of 70s prog-pop such as Fleetwood Mac, particularly on middle tracks Keep Your Water and Marine Life; a couple of tracks on, and you can hear the influence of Wings in the mix too. The varied styles and experimental feel of Sea From Shore works well, holding your interest from one track to the next as it darts through genres and music history, taking the best bits and remoulding them into something new.

All in all, Sea From Shore sounds enough like Field Music that it sweetens the bitter pill of that band's (semi)-demise. Its enduring cleverness is that its beats and harmonies get more optimistic and uplifting as the album progresses. By the time you reach the end, and parts 3 and 4 of the Rockist quartet, there's a sense of hope, as if the crashing darkness of part 2 can be escaped. The music has become more organic, the little robot has gained a human voice and a heart and has ventured out of the cold, dark city to a look for a lovely summer festival at which to have his next adventure.

Pretentious? Mais oui, mes amis, but with a self-knowing quality that means you'll let it off. Make two beautiful albums, break up, and leave a string of clever solo projects behind you. Other bands take note: it's a winning formula.

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