The Essential Field Mice

Personally, I feel like the Field Mice remain one of the most overlooked and criminally underrated bands of the last 25 years. Oh they definitely have a devoted cult of fans, and are recognized by most anyone with a more than passive interest in twee pop, but in terms of being regarded as one of the most influential bands of the 80's, they still have a ways to go. It's remarkable how fresh this music still sounds, something that I can't help but attribute to how stale the "indie pop" genre is becoming at this point. For example, one of the internet's most recent blog bands is The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. They're a solid group, but I don't feel they aren't doing anything different than what the Field Mice were doing more than 20 years ago, and the tunes aren't nearly as solid. Still, their most popular song "Young Adult Friction" nears 4,000 plays a week on last.fm, yet the Field Mice's "Emma's House", gets less than 400. Life just isn't fair.

But back to the Mice- They only released three albums: Snowball in 1989, Skywriting in 1990, and For Keeps in 1991. Their formation was only a year before Snowball's release and they broke up shortly after the For Keeps tour. Despite this brief 3 year existence, they created a remarkably consistent output of material, with less than a handful of songs that are subpar ("Humblebee" as one.) The best collection of the band's material is the 1998 Where'd You Learn to Kiss That Way? compilation which takes 36 of the band's best songs, both from the original albums and various 7" singles. Though it comes close, there's still 15 recorded tracks by the band that do not make the compilation, so pursuing the actual albums is a necessity. Still, just about everyone's personal favorite Field Mice song is likely to be on Where'd You Learn to Kiss That Way?

However, I decided to take this compilation one step further. What if I cut down the 36 tracks to the essential essentials, enough to make a one disc compilation of the band's material? I did just that, and deciding what to include and what to omit was more difficult than expected. I ended up listening to the band's entire discography, and rated every song on a scale from 1-5. Everything on this mix got at least a 4 and five songs got the 5rating (Sensitive, Below the Stars, Emma's Hose, End of the Affair and Willow. ) This posed problems though, as there were still great songs left over that wouldn't fit. For example, "This Is Not Here" (a 4.5 for me) didn't make the cut. I guess compilations need to be this way in some regard, as if they weren't, there would be no incentive to pursue the artist any further. You just can't have ALL the greats. Also, I tried to organize the mix in a way that varies from the released compilation, yet still works well as a mix. This is how it turned out:

The Essential Field Mice

1. Sensitive
2. Emma's House
3. If You Need Someone
4. Couldn't Feel Safer
5. Everything About You
6. September's Not So Far Away
7. End of the Affair
8. Willow
9. A Wrong Turn and Raindrops
10. Let's Kiss and Make Up
11. This Love Is Not Wrong
12. An Earlier Autumn
13. Canada
14. So Said Kay
15. Between Hello and Goodbye
16. And Before the First Kiss
17. White
18. When Morning Comes to Town
19. Below the Stars

Bonus- This is Not Here (I just had to include this somehow. Let's just say it's track 20 for those listening with ipods or just straight from the folder.)

The Field Mice @Amazon.com