Foreign Fields: 'Dry' + 'Ryley Crowe'

Dry + Ryley Crowe;

I am a complete sucker for Foreign Fields's work. Since having heard their first album I cannot get enough so whenever a there's a new release from them, I am there and listening. I heard about their two new songs through Goldflakepaint's interview with the pair. From reading the interview, it really enlightens you to the concept behind the release. Finding out that there's a concept behind the work is a beautiful thing. It let's you understand what the artist was trying to create, what it meant to them at the time or what inspired them to create it - ideas, memories, events, then can be heard and experienced in an entirely new way and maybe in a way that is then understood or interpreted by the audience completely differently.

From the interview we discover what the concept of their new EP (which is to be released in October) will be: the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Dry is their representation of depression. It's a heavy topic to take on, depression, not only this topic but also the rest of the stages. These days, depression is slowly becoming more discussed and more accepted as an illness. It's an illness, like any other, that only the person who has undertaken the depths of it can truly understand it. It, although has many similarities within the people who have it, also has many differences and affects people in different ways.

The song itself (Dry) is lush with electronicism that plays with the texture of the piece, such as stripping away the parts, adding in harmonies and softening the electronic beat when the chorus is initially introduced. From the beginning it’s incorporated with strummed guitars that add this extra element of texture as well as bringing the musicality of the piece forward to reality giving the listener something to grip onto. It crescendos and thins right at the best moments, building to this instrumental finish before it calms to solo piano and vocals singing, “it might be time to stop looking / you need to let it go / do I need to let it go?” The lyrics of the track are a brilliant metaphor, although a very melancholic metaphor for depression: “I’ve had a year spent in dust and dirt / I am leather stretched thin / Coming out as a final attempt to tell you / I am dry / Can you hold me? / Under the sea / Let me drown to a degree / I am dry”.

Ryley Crowe has a calmer feel to it, peppered in picks of guitar and slides from the movement of chords, and cradled in both the lush, layered and reverbed strings and the vocals. It’s a shorter song in comparison to Dry but contains just as much emotion and atmosphere. The soundscape and atmosphere they create is through the little quirks of melodies, textured instrument parts, the reverb that they add to backing vocals and the electronicism they use – however subtly they use it. They’ve always been one for less lyrics than more and it’s definitely not a bad thing – the instrumental side to their work brings out everything that they say within the short verses without having to say anymore than they already have.

It’s clear that Foreign Fields are creating work just as good as their previous releases, probably even better. This album is going to make October a very good month when it’s released. (They've also released a video for Dry so have a watch - and a listen - below!)