The music industry is a fickle thing. A bands success more often than not can be whittled down to a matter of being in the right place at the right time, (musically speaking that is). So the fact that Sunderland’s Field Music decided to break off into several solo projects at a point when “breaking through” was within arms reach was a huge gamble. First came David Brewis’ effort, School Of Language, a venture into pop that managed to be both accessible yet hugely original at the same time, hailed by many as a resounding success.

The Week That Was is brother Peter’s answer to the aforementioned.

Dealing with the topic of media consumption and audience reliance on what is often an untrustworthy industry for information, ‘The Week That Was‘ is essentially a crime thriller told through music. The songs play the part of the evidence, each one a snippet of story which make the audience question how much they rely on the media for “news”, and how much of this can actually be believed.

It’s clear that Peter Brewis lives for making music as looking at the amount of time and effort that has been put into developing this self titled debuts theme is quite astonishing. What’s more astonishing however is the fact that the whole album was written and orchestrated by one man. Multilayered songs chop and change direction at a whim, ending a million miles from where they began. Violins give songs a theatrical edge that conjures images of 50’s noir films, supplementing the albums dark storyline perfectly. Drums rumble away in none linear patterns. Yet as interesting as this all sounds, somehow it doesn’t always come together particularly well.

Don’t get me wrong, the album has some truly dazzling moments. The subtle violin play within third track ‘The Story Waits For No One’ is executed with near perfection, and a similar thing can be said of opening track ‘Learn To Learn’. Really there’s only a handful of moments when ‘The Week That Was’ doesn’t quite make the grade and I wonder whether they’re even worth mentioning, but then I listen to some of the better tracks and feel that I have to justify why the record didn’t receive a higher mark than it did.

The bass line in ‘The Good Life’ sounds a bit too reminiscent of one of those irritating 80’s ska songs and as a result makes the track stick out like a soar thumb and ‘It’s All Gone Quiet’’s lack of a real drumbeat makes the rest of the instruments sound isolated and unsupported, but this is all really just me nitpicking. Overall, for one person to have written this album is nothing short of outstanding. With some great interplay between unconventional instruments and well thought out composition, The Week That Was could easily amass as much of a following as Field Music ever did.