The Week That Was

The debut solo album by Field Music's Peter Brewis. Written and recorded in late 2007 at Field Music's 8 Studio in Sunderland, The Week That Was emerged from an imagined crime thriller dreamt up by Brewis and inspired by Paul Auster's labyrinthine storytelling. Brewis started writing the songs as if they were moments, instances of perspectives within this story. The story was left to fall away, leaving a puzzle of musical snapshots. The songs are the evidence in this particular mystery and the victims, perpetrators, and onlookers raise questions with familiar concerns. Musically the record is an expansive tribute, paying direct (and indirect) homage to the wildly ambitious Linn Drum and Fairlight experiments of Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, and Tin Drum-era Japan. Fused with typically detailed arrangements and a sense of drama, this makes The Week That Was a brain-shattering, 32-minute epic, straying far outside the conventions of most indie-guitar music.