Field Music: 'We earn five grand a year'

It's endearing as well as illustrative that Peter and David Brewis, siblings from Sunderland who together make up the band Field Music, insist our little jug of milk is taken away. We've been served a tray of steaming tea in a north London pub, the brothers have whitened their brews to satisfaction, and – look – there's a good splash of semi-skimmed left over that can go back in the fridge. Bartender!

These Brewises are famously frugal: micro-managing musicians who approach the day-to-day of being in a band with an eye on the pennies and an ethos, they say, like that of two blokes "running a fairly unsuccessful small business". It's something that channels to the core of Field Music, in terms of the band's lyrical output (songs about bills, about beating traffic, about people on the dole) and also their industriousness. Last week's launch of new album Plumb marks a seventh full-length release (including 2008's pair of solo records) since Field Music's debut of twisty indie-rock came out in 2005.

"I'd hate to think we weren't working as hard as people who have real jobs," says 31-year-old David, the taller, cheerier Brewis. Peter, 35, says that he regularly wakes up in the morning chastising himself for being "a fucking lazy bastard, a fucking idiot for not doing any work today", before he's even out of bed – just to dispel any possible chance he'll waste the day playing Xbox. He tells a story about attending a recent school reunion. "I hadn't seen some of these people in 17 years, and in that time they've worked hard, nine to five, worked their balls off, you know? And in my job I swan around getting my picture taken for the paper. I was kind of embarrassed." At the reunion, says Peter, the school chums who'd kept track of his career had made a few reckless assumptions. "Eee! You're in a band! You must be a millionaire! I told them: Yeah, look, I sometimes earn five grand a year."

This pair are unashamedly open about their finances. In the pub we discuss all sorts: the trouble with rock bands today (an obsession with being mysterious, not enough funny haircuts), and which of the Brewises has the final say when they're at work on an album (it's "a revolving dictatorship", changing from track to track depending on who wrote it). But our conversation always meanders back to money.

This is mostly my fault: I'm fascinated by the economics of Field Music, partly because it's rare for a band to gab so readily about their personal loot, and partly because I can't believe how little they make. All those acclaimed albums to their name – the new one a disorienting but compelling listen, notable for its interchanging time signatures and sudden halts, the result earning mass approval from pop critics – and it amounts to earnings of a few grand a year, money that goes straight into studio rental, equipment repair, all the dull things. David tells a story about his then girlfriend, now wife, working in a Sunderland cafe and being asked: if your fella's in a successful band, why are you working here? "Answer," Peter interrupts, "to help pay for that band."

Peter is married as well, to the singer in a band called the Cornshed Sisters. Neither brother has children, but as they get older and responsibilities mount, have they been tempted, I wonder, to alter their methods? Stick with one time signature, and chase sales? They'd rather go back to their old nine-to-five jobs, they say. They both expect to, if they ever have kids.

"It's part of the Field Music project," says Peter. "Being responsible. It doesn't mean we can't have fun, but we want to behave like adults."

David agrees. "I really don't like the idea that being in a band is just a way to extend your childhood," he says.

It started for the Brewises in childhood with a present from Argos: a £20 guitar, given to David one Christmas in the late 80s and quickly co-opted by Peter. At around the same time they were given a miniature drum kit, then a four-track recorder, and a career in composition got under way. Later, they performed as a band for the first time, joining friend and keyboardist Andy Moore to help out in a GCSE music exam. Soon, the trio were playing in local pubs.

When Field Music's first album came out in 2005, David was working for Oxfam's accounts department, and Peter was a youth worker; they recorded that self-titled record and the ones that followed in a studio built into an old building on what used to be Monkwearmouth Colliery. Known as 8 Music, the studio was part of an arts cooperative that also birthed Tyne and Wear bands the Futureheads and Maxïmo Park, but it's gone now, explains Peter, the result of funding cuts. The brothers recorded Plumb, instead, in a new home on the banks of the Wear. "A horrible little 1970s industrial unit," says David, "saved from demolition by the economic downturn." "Supposed to be Manhattan-style apartments by now," muses Peter. The brothers got a good deal on the rent, and moved in. Superstitiously, they brought along the charity shop-bought curtains that used to hang at 8 Music.

"We were worried our music wouldn't sound the same without the old touches," says David. And the curtains were a bit of a tease, by the sound of it – the brothers gently mocking their reputation for spartanism. In a similar vein David pokes fun at Peter, as we finish our tea, for writing his full name on each of the guitar picks in his pocket (a new anti-theft initiative). But they offer no apologies for a miserliness that makes them, they reckon, creatively richer.

"We're allowed to write about whatever we want to write about," says Peter, "because of the way we conduct the business." I ask which of their songs on the new album might not have seen a release had they skewed recent work towards more commercial ends, and David, chuckling,  points out that a recent single was written about his thoughts on the word "obfuscation". "I get to write a song about that. About obfuscation!" He beams.

"We don't spend any money so we can do what we want," says Peter. "And if that's harder work," says David, "then it's the price of being free."