.
Screw the mainstream
if you really want to get your rocks off you have to go to the underground.
That's just what we plan to do with this series, take some of the best
emerging bands that are out blowing away hardcore fans on the underground
music scene.
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Hamilton Field
By Tim Byrnes
Hamilton
Field - Hamilton Field
Label: Self
released
Rating: 
The music of Hamilton Field evokes, if
not the Garage, then at least a well appointed basement (and by well appointed,
I mean, of course, a fridge full of beer and the requisite number of punk
rock and Playboy posters on the wall) where these three musicians chase
the rock and roll muse around the room like Pepe Le Pew in hot pursuit
of the latest black cat to hit the white paint. As brash and life affirming
as the early Who and as down and dirty as a barrel of black leather switchblades,
if not the Standells themselves, Hamilton Field are the new contenders
in the power pop sweepstakes, thankfully leaning decidedly toward the power'
side of the equation.
It's like Cheap Trick's little brothers
went back in time, kidnapped Pete Townshend and siphoned off all the good
stuff for themselves. You know when I'm talking about. Right before he
started his mission to prove himself a Serious Composer by writing Tommy,
and thus losing his perspective and all use as a rock and roller. When
he began the long, inevitable slouch toward the Bethlehem of the tortured
artiste, losing that spark of primitive fire that ignited the Who in the
first place and bonded them to their fans in ways rarely seen. Hamilton
Field sounds like us, like they're regular people with regular concerns
and sometimes lousy lives that they get through by singing; and maybe by
listening we can get through a little easier, too. No, love, reign over
me!' pronouncements, no thinly disguised Messiah stories starring
themselves under assumed names. HF recognizes that it is the community
that rules, not the fevered ambitions of the lost child genius. No, Hamilton
Field is an old fashioned Rock and Roll CD by an old fashioned Rock and
Roll band, and I mean that in the best sense possible.
The opening cut, Girlfriend springs like
an electronic cat from the primordial, varispeed swamp, hits the ground
running and the CD doesn't let up from there.
Change turns on greasy, ill mannered guitars
and leering vocals, all service-with-a-sneer/angels-with-dirty-faces. Maria
is a pop masterpiece worthy of both Brian
Wilson and the Replacements, it's aching
beauty tempered by the kind of blessed abandon the Mats should have been
more famous for. The songs are all arranged in a loose-but-tight fashion
that is a difficult balance for some veteran bands to strike, which makes
the assuredness and smart mouth authority of this, a debut CD, all that
more remarkable.
After nigh unto a decade of being pilloried
and hamstrung by hordes of revolving Doors impersonators (Dear Pearl Jam,
See what you've started! Love, Tim),The Big Beat is once again in the good
and trustworthy hands of true believers. Catch Hamilton Field at a club
near you when they travel through your town and, if they ask, please let
them sleep on your couch. We're all in this together, after all.
Listen
to samples and Purchase this CD online
Visit
the official website
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