We first featured Field Medic (the recording project of San Francisco’s Kevin Patrick) back in September when we wrote a criminally short piece on his great little release PEGASUSTHOTZ. Luckily for us, he is a pretty prolific music-maker and so we have the chance to redeem ourselves with a proper write-up of his latest release, Me, My Gibberish & the Moon, which he unveiled late last month.
To describe the sound of Field Medic is to get into some pretty deep contemplations about what we mean when we talk about “folk” music. His music is largely based on delicate finger-picked guitar and intimate vocals with lovelorn lyrics. So far so “folk”. But Patrick’s brand of folk is a long way from the earthy and pastoral nature traditionally associated with the genre. This folk music is not inspired by dusty prairies and snow-capped peaks, but rather reclusive twilit bedrooms and the grey and rain-streaked view of a grey and rain-streaked city.
Opener ’M.M.G.A.T.M’ (a shorthand title track) sounds like a simple and unfussy bedroom folk track, but a look at the lyrics reveals a weird love song, with lines like:
“I crouch low and smoke with the spiders
To keep the raindrops off my head
I’m singing about your ghost love
In reverie like you were dead”.
This odd, dream-like imagery is apparent throughout the release and elevates it beyond the vast majority of contemporary guy-and-guitar acts. See for example ‘Prowler’:
“I was led to your spirit at dusk by the black dogs
I awoke at midnight and i saw you perched there
I said it’s feeling like a dream but it’s looking like a nightmare”.
However, these lyrical eccentricities do not detract from the wistful air, meaning the record still feels genuine and heartfelt. The second song, ‘Full Grown’, begins with, “We used to meet on Tuesdays, beneath the moon down by the mill”, a line that would feel at home in any classic folk song. The fact is that for all its strangeness, this is a record that feels real. When Patrick sings you know he means it, and if you don’t believe me then listen to the final track, ‘Shadowboxing’ and tell me that his desperation is not palpable.
I suppose the lesson of this short write-up is that if you like folk music (and all of its connotations) then you’ll like this music too. Okay, so it might not be the sound of a back-porch banjo or a silky smooth croon, but the sentiment is there, that heart-on-sleeve honesty. Perhaps us modern people are not quite as eloquent in expressing our feelings (romantic or otherwise), but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel them. This is folk music for the twenty first century, tales of surreal love and loss and dissociation, strange little hymns for the lonely and confused.
As Patrick sings on the title track:
“I stalk the streets alone now
Just me my gibberish and the moon
For I speak a different language
If I cannot speak with you”.
You can buy Me, My Gibberish & the Moon on cassette via Sunroom Recordz, or get it digitally from the Field Medic Bandcamp page.