Hold Still Life by Field Mouse

A Parallel Planets piece by Kannika Pena

The first time I heard Field Mouse was on a random new tunes playlist from a music blog. Usually​, those playlists include a hundred or more songs, and I put them on my iPod on shuffle (I have this outdated iPod Touch with a semi-permanent screen of death, but it still works so I haven't replaced it yet. I'm kind of a semi-Luddite that way. That, or I'm just cheap and lazy.)  to see what song makes me sit up, listen, and bother to look at the title. We live in an era that overdoses us every second with content, so finding good stuff to listen to is tough business. When I was in college, I would actively look for such stuff, but now that I am, ahem, a professional woman (excuse me while I cringe in a corner for a minute), I let some random dude online collate a hundred-song playlist for me so I can listen to it while I'm stuck in traffic.

Well, anyway, many of those songs rarely make an impression on me. Some of them urge me look at my iPod just so I can press skip and question my faith in humanity. I generally consider playlists a success if they can provide me with a band whose discography I would like to wade in.

The first Field Mouse song I heard was "Glass." It's a shimmering dream pop song with just a tiny bit of an edge. I looked up the band and saw the video for the song, which I wasn't such a fan of (I haven't actually finished watching it - I believe it's just a medium shot of the vocalist and not much else), but I was curious enough to listen to some more of their songs. I have tried looking for their debut album, but apart from a few YouTube clips featuring the songs, they are no longer available for purchase.

I looked through their other songs on Bandcamp and was intrigued by "Happy." A song that doesn't sound happy at all.  It sounds like an endless car trip going through a tunnel.  Not to say that it's unbearable - quite the opposite.  It sounds like a car trip home after what seems to be the happiest night of your life: all the fun you've had is already a memory, the smile you've had all night is wearing off but still there, just like the traces of lipstick on your lips, and you just know everything could be downhill from here.

In fact, many of the songs I've heard from the band sounds like something is shattering - not literally, of course, because that would not be a sound that's good to hear. Simply picture a shattering glass - the purpose of the thing is broken, sure, but it has given way to something that's close to spectacle, shimmering in tiny pieces, it's painful to touch but quite beautiful to behold from afar.

After exhausting the few songs they have on their Bandcamp page (which also features awesome versions of Deerhoof's "Helicopter" and the Twin Peaks theme)​, I wait for a full-length record for months and get none, so I go on with my life and for a while, I forget about them. During the time I forgot about them,​ they promptly release a new record called Hold Still Life.

I am happy about this record. It has 12 songs on it, plus a few acoustic versions of the songs on the record.  It also features a reworked version of "Happy" which is disconcerting at first listen, just because I was just so used to the EP version.  What I love about the record is that I feel so at home in it.  This is what my life sounds like right now if it were a record.  Like, okay, I still have a bit of youthful energy in me yet, but man, I'm not sure how much more I can take, what with all the daily bullshit.  Everything is on the cusp of changing, it feels, but it's felt like that for years.  I'm past the age of completely believing that I am anything but this, and at the same time, I still can't grasp the whole concept that this is all I'm ever going to be.  

Maybe it's a good thing that I heard the record this year. I would like to believe the record found me at a time I needed it the most.

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