On “the journey to the center of nothing,” the closer of Field Medic’s eighth studio album, surrender instead, Kevin Patrick Sullivan starts singing about me. Not literally me—but when he gets to the line about “some journalist in Flatbush/Who’ll write the headline that’ll give you the push,” my instinct is to respond that the coffee shop where I’m drafting this review is technically in Crown Heights and that this probably isn’t the one he’s been waiting for.
Sullivan’s reflection on his place in the music industry is a running theme on surrender instead. It follows a few years of introspection-prompting career shifts: In 2023, he released a final album on Run for Cover records, then, just a few months later, self-released another record; late last year, he put out a collection of rarities and B-sides spanning over a decade. On surrender instead, Field Medic’s signature confessional songwriting takes a more meta-narrative focus. Opener “tricks & illusions” traces his relationship to music from childhood—when he used it as a refuge from his parents’ tumultuous relationship—to his adult years, dominated by the touring grind and contract disputes. Bookended by two tracks that see Sullivan wrestling with what it means to “make it” in his industry, surrender instead comes across as an album about making albums. The shape of success shifts throughout these songs; sometimes, it’s a glowing review, sometimes it’s a moment of mutual recognition with an audience, sometimes it’s earning enough from writing “songs for adverts and films” to technically say he’s making a living off music.
The quality of Sullivan’s stream-of-consciousness songwriting varies, even within a single track. “opposite fantasies” haunts in the chorus (“I’ve got these opposite fantasies/One where I live a long time, another one where I die soon”) but clumsily packs a few too many syllables into its verses. On “the journey to the center of nothing,” he’s slanting his rhymes and emphasizing the last syllable of each line: “Living paycheck to paycheck/You’re a postmodern survivalist/Grief or spite lost in the moment/Till you recall the Everest of crippling debt.” The lines are delivered almost like an acoustic Beastie Boys cover, which could be funny; instead, his stressed syllables stress me out.
Over a decade into his prolific run of folk records, Sullivan has proven himself adept at writing warm, pretty folk songs. surrender instead has those in spades, but it’s the detours that occasionally elevate the record above coffee shop-friendly, paint-by-numbers singer-songwriter fare. On the bridge of “falling out,” Sullivan imagines what a conversation with an estranged friend might sound like if he were to reach out. It’s perhaps the most compelling moment of the record, his speculation offering a reprieve from so much telling rather than showing. The bouncy drum machine on “simply obsessed” is a nice change of pace, though the song’s lyrics scan a bit too cute and too middle-of-the-road—it makes me want him to either reign in the sentimentality or commit to I Love You, Honeybear levels of schmaltz. More satisfying is when he embraces goofy melodrama on “MELANCHOLY,” drawling, “My heart will never mend!” over a lonesome cowboy’s waltz. Still, the song deserves a big finish, but instead gets a fade-out. As the doo-wop progression slows and the hazy girl group backing vocals dim alongside Sullivan’s lead, you can hear the drums stumbling momentarily. The moment is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it vision of the calamity that could have been. It’s a reminder that, eight albums in, Sullivan is nothing if not consistent—but once in a while, he could stand to let himself get a little lost on the way to saying exactly what he means.
