ALBUM REVIEW: grow your hair long if you’re wanting to see something that you can change – Field Medic

October 10, 2022 Tim Bolitho-Jones

It’s time to take a break from the death growls, blast beats and distortion pedals. grow your hair long if you’re wanting to see something that you can change is the latest album from Kevin Patrick Sullivan, aka FIELD MEDIC, and it’s a lo-fi affair. This is 27 minutes of relaxed folk that feels like a window into Sullivan’s mind. Apparently, it’s his first album to feature other musicians. Not that it’s obvious, grow your hair long if you think we’re writing the entire title out every time is so stripped back you could easily mistake it for a one-man project.

And to be entirely honest, this is right on the fringes of what would normally fall into the Distorted Sound remit and we’re not sure what to make of it. There are bound to be critics with a deeper understanding of folk who can offer a more nuanced insight, but Sullivan seems like an honest chap and he’s made a nice relaxing set of tunes. He comes across like the kind of musician who would have charmed Woodstock attendees in 1969 and grow your hair long if this’ll do is a pleasant enough way to spend half an hour.

It does however, get alarmingly sad at times. Sullivan’s lyrics are peppered with humour, but there’s also a dark side to his emotive song-writing. He’s not afraid to discuss difficult subjects with stark, unflinching frankness and there are references to suicide and existential angst aplenty. Always Emptiness for example is a depressing introduction to the album that makes it sound as if he’s been through hell. And not in an awesome, death metal gore and chainsaws way either. It’s a tender and disarming number, but it’s so achingly morose it’s hard to enjoy in the traditional sense.

But in way, grow your hair long and so forth isn’t an album you enjoy so much as appreciate. The likes of Noonday Sun and House Arrest aren’t meant for anything more riotous than idly drifting down a river and trailing your hand in the water. Even the more upbeat numbers like Weekends have an underlying theme of hopelessness. This album is very much a mood piece, and if you’re not one for sitting alone, staring at faded photographs of lost loves, you’re going to find it infuriating. If you’re willing to get swept up in it though, the bittersweet melodies and wry humour are quite enthralling.

To our untrained ears then, FIELD MEDIC’s latest album is a decent enough listen, providing you’re willing to embrace it. grow your hair long and you could have just copied and pasted it every time you moron, editor is a very personal slice of folk music and there’s a richness to be found here. It’s wrapped up in three-minute chunks of softly spoken depression, but it’s worth looking for all the same.

Rating: 7/10