You quit.

That’s exactly what Pete Brewis did when he was the drummer for the Futureheads, the most exciting band to come out of England since Franz Ferdinand somehow sucked their way to international fame. Brewis has regrouped just in time to compete with the Futureheads’ second album. His new band, Field Music, has just released their debut, and well … it kind of sounds a bit like his old band. The Futureheads’ fusion of Beach Boys harmonies with Wire’s fragmented ADHD punk rock is now joined with an overriding obsession with XTC.

Distortion is replaced by clean tones, electric guitars are replaced by pianos, pounding drums give way to quirky time changes; the tempos are much slower as well, with most of the punk influence being replaced with a very English art-pop sensibility. Think early Roxy Music, Electric Light Orchestra, and some of the Jam’s later slower material. Much of the Futureheads’ focus on unique vocal arrangements and charmingly English harmonies fortunately remains intact though. In fact, the melody to “Pieces” could easily be a song from his old band, if you completely rearranged the instrumentation. “It’s Not the Only Way to Feel Happy”–with its moody sliding bassline, tinkling xylophone touches, Oriental cymbal splashes–is a gorgeous slice of art-pop that evokes the same slow-boil mood of “Danger of the Water,” from the Heads’ debut. Meanwhile, “You’re So Pretty” has the kind of bouncy, soaring vocal layers that the Beach Boys made their career on.

Not all the songs are as fantastic as these few though, and the second half of the album bleeds together, with little to distinguish the songs from the others around them. An uptick in tempo here or there, or maybe a little of the punk energy from Brewis’ old band would break things up a bit, but the album just keeps chugging along at midtempo. Sometimes you can have too much piano and undistorted guitar. Even when the songwriting is generic though, the songs are packed with the kind of sonic details you won’t catch unless you listen on headphone. The first song drops in all kinds of odd extraneous percussion instruments, used more for texture than actual rhythm, bouncing between the right and left channels.

If Field Music veer a little to close to XTC at times, occasionally getting lost in their own maze of quirkiness, then at least Brewis isn’t obsessed with recreating past accomplishments. If the uniformly slow tempos occasionally make the songs blend together, particularly in its latter half, then at least Field Music doesn’t feel the obligatory, and sometimes unnecessary and boring, need to ‘rock out,’ unlike most rock bands. If they sound too damn English, well maybe you’re too American. If it doesn’t always succeed on every level, Brewis’ new band is at least an interesting recasting of an already interesting aesthetic that he helped to create.