Artist The Field Auxiliary

Grinding down its melodies like a whittler makes a spoon, The Field Auxiliary gingerly carves out a simple but thorny melody in each of its songs, a solid foundation for other tidbits to float in and out. The band is purposefully coy about describing its music, blabbing about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, being "sonorously pacifying," and a whole boatload of other hooey, but that's presumably just to place the focus back where it belongs: on the music. And rightfully so, as frontman Dan Smart ably leads the rest of his crew through winking space-rock that feels very much grounded on earth. The band's debut LP, The Mass Ordinary Or Don’t Come Unwound Windwaker, was just released after being in production for 14 months.

Updated 04/06/2010