Alongside Maximo Park and the Futureheads, Sunderland's Field Music join England's northeast renaissance with their second album Tones of Town.

The trio may have remixed tracks for Maximo Park and include ex-Futureheads band member Peter Brewis, but their sound is different

to their compatriots. It has none of

the punk attitude, for one. Instead, it's a lighter form of retro pop with that quintessential English sound that puts one in mind of XTC or day-in-the-life chroniclers, the Kinks.

Tones of Town reflects the boys' small-town background in subject matter and sound. The tracks don't have the sophistication of the big city, but strive to find the common touch as the boys muse on everyday concerns and life as members of the masses.

Still there's an ambition to the arrangements, which sees piano and strings melded with electronic sound manipulation. This produces 11 quirky tracks that also manage to be easy listening.

Brewis said the band were aiming for an expanse of noise on the album both instrumental and experimental - to that end they recorded some

of the percussion sections in stairwells and used the toilets under the studio for reverb.

Despite the desire to be experimental, there's no driving force here. The first single, In Context, and the title track suggest promise - the harmonies are pleasant, the arrangements professional - but the absence of any killer tunes, the kind that have you humming long after the album's close, means this set is unlikely to bring Field Music the level of success enjoyed by their brethren.