Mercury Lounge bouncer Eric Payne offered a pretty solid credo for a night on New York City’s Lower East Side: “Either you rock, you roll, or you go home.” SPIN.com chose the rock and the roll, as did a packed house gathered to see local band Murder Mystery and the Anglo-Icelandic electro-folk-rock quintet Fields. A self-described “Buddy Holly meets Motown” quartet, Murder Mystery’s set appeased the natives with the keyboard-driven pop tune, “Love Astronaut,” off their upcoming self-titled release.
It was the genre-bending Fields, however, that carried the night, mixing delicate, melancholy lyrics with lead-heavy guitar riffs and washed-out, digital soundscapes on highlights like “Song for the Fields” and “If You Fail, We All Fail,” for which the band recently released a video. Frontman Neil Peill introduced the stirring new track “To Death” with a ghost story: He claims to have seen an apparition while recording the song. “I think I’m probably cursed now, and will curse everyone,” Peill teased, “so, apologies.”
Sitting down with SPIN.com after the show, both Peill and vocalist/keyboardist Thorunn Antonia dished on their debut album, set for a March ’07 release. “We actually put blood, sweat, and fucking tears into it,” Peill said. And don’t you dare pin this group down: “The last thing we want is to be lumped into a scene,” Thorunn said. “We’ll make our own fucking scene.” KATIE HEATH
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