David Brewis The Soft Struggles

Field Music’s David Brewis brings a ten-piece band to the Howard Assembly Room to perform his new album The Soft Struggles.

All-acoustic and jazz-inflected, The Soft Struggles takes one step away from Field Music’s eclectic palette and instead leans into the luminous spontaneity of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and the breathy, string-laden chamber pop of Colin Blunstone’s One Year, with several tracks built around a single day of live recording at Field Music’s studio in Sunderland.

“There’s something a bit magical about a bunch of musicians together in a room being thrown in at the deep end,” says David, “So many of my favourite records were made quickly by musicians sitting a few feet from each other, playing songs they’d never even heard before the session began. That’s what I tried to do with this album. A chord sheet, a set of lyrics, a brief chat about tempo and then, okay comrades, see you at the other side.”

The ensemble features Admiral Fallow’s Sarah Hayes on flute and piano, leading lights of North East jazz, Faye MacCalman and John Pope, on saxophone/clarinet and double bass, strings from regular collaborators The Crude Tarmac Quartet, Alan Hull, award-winning singer Eve Cole and David’s brother Peter on drums.

Presented in partnership with Brudenell Presents.