Field Medic
surrender instead LP (S/R)
There is something beautiful about an artist coming home to themselves. After years spent criss-crossing the country in a rented van, Field Medic’s Kevin Patrick Sullivan has endured life’s relentlessness enough to return to his own center. The songs that color his new album, surrender instead, are earned gestures of hard living.
The LP is a rebirth of sorts, arriving after what Sullivan refers to as a brief “mental retirement” from the music business in 2024, a year in which he turned away from the often toxic grind of being a touring musician, and towards a lifestyle centered on searching and healing. “I spent the last few years sober and in weekly therapy, which led to a lot of introspection about how everything that has been affects what is now,” he says. “I spent many years conflating all of my self-worth into the success of Field Medic. I've been trying to reconnect with my personhood apart from my persona. The first song on this record finds me wondering if I should just focus on writing sync music for my income instead of dealing with the emotional turmoil of being a front-facing artist.”
Over time, Sullivan has worn many hats: dive-bar poet, SoundCloud rapper, screamo vocalist in training, synth-popper. Sometimes, he’s a few of those things all at once. He’s a man who’s lived through sobriety gained and sobriety lost. His last studio album of new material, 2023’s light is gone 2, was an inspired, experimental departure from the strum-and-struggle of his previous haunts. But surrender instead is everything a Field Medic fan could want and everything a Field Medic agnostic could need as a convincing sampler. The album returns to each checkpoint in Sullivan’s career thus far, documenting a twentysomething musician becoming a thirtysomething musician—an artist settling into what life exists just beyond the pale and oft-daunting demands of songcraft.
Across surrender instead, Sullivan breaks and mends your heart, and says exactly what’s on his mind. He takes down the pay-to-play underbelly of the music industry’s A&R world as much as he laments a departed lover or his forgone relationship with alcohol. It all kicks off with the tender exhale of “tricks & illusions,” sung with a forthright clarity that sets the tone for the remaining nine tracks. On the endearing love song “simply obsessed,” tape-deck beats tilt with jubilance as Sullivan reminds listeners “that they're deserving of love and of course stylish no matter what they choose to wear.” “falling out” is old-school Country Medic, sputtering through bursts of banjo, chugging guitar, and starry-eyed piano runs. A similarly twangy offering, the lo-fi recording of “no hometown” abounds with melancholic warmth as Sullivan reflects on how one’s childhood and adolescence informs their response to present-day situations.
“INFERNO” combines the synth melodies of Sullivan’s Protection Spell side-project with beachy dream-pop guitar and slacker twang, while “castle peaks” is a Nick Drake-referencing illustration of high-fidelity couch-pop. And then there’s “MELANCHOLY,” which disarms you with a doo-wop melody you can fall dumbly in love with and to. It’s the best and densest Field Medic song since “Mood Ring Baby”—retracking simple, catchy structures through faithful DIY tinkering. “After getting sober, years in therapy, and for the first time taking an antidepressant, I would still sometimes suffer from days or weeks of stifling depression. Experiencing that unique and dreadful feeling comes as quite a shock when you've been ‘doing the work’ and ‘healing’ in the ways that I had been, and still am,” Sullivan explains. “I had just read William Styron's ‘darkness visible,’ which is his memoir about his time in the throes of a depressive episode. Having recently written a doo wop song for a pitch for sync, the ‘50s chord progression was fresh in my mind, as well as the examination of melancholy as a lifelong disease that waxes and wanes, but may never go away entirely.” Gentle closer “the journey to the center of nothing” taps into his strum-and-sing, postmodern protest-singer getup, newly outfitted with the snappy hindsight of a musician hip to his own creative worth.
2025 marks 10 years since Sullivan’s debut LP, Light is Gone, first arrived. While surrender instead signals a new beginning for the prolific musician, it also feels like a celebration of all the beloved work he’s shared this past decade. Playing out like a greatest hits collection, the LP highlights Sullivan’s singular strengths as an artist, and plucks from the highest notes of his catalog to date. surrender instead matches the prosaic with the idyllic, surfing between past and present in harmonica puffs and balancing days washed out by the drink with days prolonged by a holistic, simple kind of love. The result is Field Medic’s most honest and grounded album yet. It’s not calculated or performative—it’s a practice in self-compassion, in learning to live with what lingers. And in that vulnerability is a quiet offering: the sound of someone trying, healing, and slowly setting their baggage down.
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