“like a feather or a pawprint
your spirit speaks to me of kinship
the only love that i believe in
you’re a golden railroad
shooting thru me like starlight
your name i whisper
& it sounds like music
it sounds like windchimes”

‘OTL’ is all acoustic guitar and mouth organ and lyrics about the things people do to find that special someone. You know, like wearing weird clothes and reading Murakami and taking percocet at parties, buying supermarket sushi and reading in libraries and drinking on church steps at twilight. ‘ur the 1 4 me’ is another slow and acoustic song, in which the one true love has been found, “feels like new years day when we kiss / feels like new years day when we talk”, before ‘not a normal boy’ closes the EP with something that almost sounds like Father John Misty’s brand of addled romance.

“i’m not a normal boy
i need an abnormal girl
you’re in me like a prayer
you hold me like a spell
you’re supernatural”

You can get that beer called becks reminds me of a haiku i wrote on cassette via Sunroom Recordz, or as a name-you-price download via the Field Medic Bandcamp page.

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“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.”

Light is Gone opens with the title track, which captures what I’ve been trying to say rather nicely. It’s based on minimal acoustic guitar that wouldn’t sound out of place on a J. Tillman record, and has lyrics at once strange and oddly meaningful (“i don’t suppose you know the roses, the sand dollars, hurricanes daughters, leave me sad afternoons”). It’s also chock full of literary references which, as you might know by now, we like an awful lot. 

‘NEON FLOWERZ’ sounds like an older Casiotone For the Painfully Alone track, with it’s lo-fi drum machine, ‘selfish’ is a gloomily heartfelt track set to acoustic guitar and piano, and ‘Tombstone Poetry’ is restrained and sincere, with delicate tumbling acoustics. ‘xplodineyes’ is another track with digital percussion and weirdly comforting lyrics (“Calm those exploding eyes, you’ve got to forgive yourself sometimes”), while ‘GLITTER’ takes the lyrical game to a whole new level – “I looked straight into your eyes and destroyed the folk song of our life. We became we became so close by the end of the war. But its just too spooky living with your ghosts. I want glitter and big cigars, cocaine with strippers, fuck movie stars”. On ‘Graffiti Paint’ Patrick longs for life in a gang (“the streets are dangerous for sure / but the hood shows love while all these well to do people i know are cold as fuck”) and then ‘Colorado’ brings back the heartbreakingly intimate folk:

“you said:
‘i’m gonna work so hard,
so that nothing can break my heart.
i’m gonna be happy like a dog splashing
swimming with a stick.
i’ve been having a hard time
for a long time'”

The album ends on ‘it’s still you.’, an autobiographical track which tells the story of an extraordinary few months in Patrick’s life in which he accidentally cashed a stolen cheque for someone and ended up in the grip of paranoia. It turned out alright in the end, as the lyrics attest: “that whole thing about the LAPD, well- it’s not as bad as it sounds, i just cashed a check for somebody that turned out to be stolen, i think i did it cuz i was lonely, i got the call today that the bank’s gonna pay restitution, but there was a while there where i thought i was gonna get thrown in a cell or be on the line for $5000”. But this isn’t the only story on show in the song. There is also something even more serious, a sense of sadness (“to answer your letter-
most days i’m doing fine but sometimes i still get deep down dark & feeling low “) and longing and a wistful remembrance of good times long gone:

“i tried to play that song
that we used to sing together bout sailing
couldn’t make it thru the first verse
without breaking down & crying
what the hell is wrong with me…
hey i just wish we could sing it.”

You can download Light is Gone now via the Field Medic bandcamp page, and it is also due to be released on cassette by SUNROOM RECORDZ next month. We’ll keep you updated on that one.

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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.

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