{"id":10600,"date":"2018-08-27T14:42:16","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T14:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=10600"},"modified":"2018-12-07T17:59:15","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T17:59:15","slug":"field-reports-summertime-christopher-porterfield-faces-his-demons-with-the-sun-in-his-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=10600","title":{"rendered":"Field Report’s summertime: Christopher Porterfield faces his demons with the sun in his face"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Field Report Summertime Songs<\/em> (Verve Forecast)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The waning days of summer feel like a perfect time to consider what lies in the warm shadows of Field Report\u2019s latest album Summertime Songs<\/em>, released last March. Yes, days remain sultry and summertime songs glow and gleam with all the embracing life-force of the season.<\/p>\n

Yet singer-songwriter Christopher Porterfield\u2019s senses arise from nature\u2019s passing cycles into death, and the quietly troubling and deeply philosophical musings of his dream-infested brain.<\/p>\n

You feel older and wiser after it\u2019s done, even as you sing yourself the ear worms of Porterfield vocal hooks like an enchanted teenager. Yes, it sounds<\/em>\u00a0slicker than anything he\u2019s ever done, but it\u2019s also easily as deep, beneath the pop gloss. The effectiveness arises first from the gentle experimentalism of his music, which has abdicated the lead guitar, as has much of contemporary pop, so refreshing a release from testosterone-fueled ego and excess. That\u2019s not to knock the all the great guitarists and moments by guitarist of varying repute, but time has passed, and Field Report is right there, right here.<\/p>\n

The album opens with a searing electric violin vamp that sounds like Steve Reich on steroids and immediately pries open the listener\u2019s imagination. Throughout the album, the setting is expansive yet vivid in textures of synthesizers and electronic strings, and the sinuously propulsive drum grooves of jazz drummer Devin Drobka, delighting in messing with rocky back-beat jollies. But ultimately this is about the poetry of Porterfield, and his voice\u2019s soulful declamation of it, by turns ardently striving and biting the tongue of its own querulous spirit. His eyes and senses are too wide-open to be bullish about anything, even though they love humanity in loss, of ongoing glory that summer blesses us with.<\/p>\n

How is he doing chart wise? Well, the album may have risen and peaked already but it is listed on EuroAmericana chart the among the \u201cTips\u201d albums by the chart\u2019s resident critics. http:\/\/www.euroamericanachart.eu\/<\/a>. Nor has the album to date apparently caught up with the charms of the group’s first two albums, according to lastfm.com: https:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Field+Report<\/a><\/p>\n

Porterfield remains a sort of songwriters-songwriter, having won over a number of grade-A songcrafters whom he or Field Report has opened for, including Emmylou Harris, Richard Thompson, Adam Duritz and Counting Crows, and Aimee Mann.<\/p>\n

This cognitive dissonance in the music market may be partly because Summertime Songs<\/em> is perhaps a little too streamlined in sound for the more rough textures that appeal to typical Americana music listeners. Nevertheless, Porterfield remains decidedly the sort of ruminative, deeply resonant singer-songwriter that many folk music lovers cherish. So they\u2019re missing something if they overlook this. And there\u2019s something quintessentially American about his point of view as well, even as the electronics seem to borrow something from EuroPop.<\/p>\n

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Christopher Porterfield of Field Report. Courtesy NPR<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s American about this album? First, the band\u2019s from Milwaukee, arguably the capital of the nation\u2019s heartland. It also involves the individualism of Porterfield’s questing. He also often performs solo with only his acoustic guitar, and as big-sounding as his anthemic songs are, they work quite well solo, given the strength of his voice, musicality and poetry. He reflects today\u2019s America especially in his ongoing striving to get a grip on truth and reality, while both seem to flirt with dreamlike states, poisoned improbabilities and living nightmares \u2013 especially when so many ordinary Americans suffer from addictions, to opioids or demagoguery\u2019s easy, manipulative answers.<\/p>\n

You were bouncing off the guard rail shouting at the wind <\/em><\/p>\n

We were off our meds, drinking again;<\/em><\/p>\n

we played them like a stolen violin<\/em><\/p>\n

I knew my outlines and my ends,<\/em><\/p>\n

They were embarrassed by sincerity back then.<\/em><\/p>\n

If I knew\/ what I know\/ so far yet to go<\/em><\/p>\n

The careening scene from the song “If I Knew” feels as classic Americana as Kerouac\u2019s \u201cOn the Road,\u201d evoked also in the album cover\u2019s shambling car interior. And the last triplicate phrase, with its ending twist, reveals a guy gripping a few hard-won wisdoms. Yet the strongest of these is having learned a few forward steps in a still-long journey. The last phrase is the song\u2019s resounding refrain, hollered in the roaring wind. Those who mock sincerity with currently-fashionable cynicism end up on the sidelines of complacency.<\/p>\n