Time has an interesting effect on us music critics. Just take a look at the fact that we, as a collective, have roundly decided that the year is made up not of 12 months, as you might have thought, but 11. If the flood of year-end lists pouring into your timeline is any indication, 2023 is officially over. That is that. For fear of sounding like the very original posters making this same comment year after year around this time, I am mostly kidding—but there is some validity to the idea that the calendar can have an outsized effect on how we look at, say, a new album. To many, Kevin Patrick Sullivan, who parades around as Field Medic, submitted his entry for those 2023 lists back in early September with the release of the excellent light is gone 2. So what precisely do we do with his second 2023 LP, dope girl chronicles, an album that does not fit into our timeline?
As it turns out, time is itself a central theme of this new record. “Seven years ago the prophecy was foretold,” reads Sullivan’s Instagram post hyping the release of dope girl chronicles. This is a reference to—what could be described as the album’s centerpiece—a little country ditty called “do a little dope.” The prophecy began with the original release of the song, which came way back in 2017 as a part of his breakout record (and Run For Cover Records debut) Songs From the Sunroom. The song—a live cut—starts with Sullivan introducing the song to the crowd:“It’s off an album called dope girl chronicles, coming out in 2023,” he says, to a smattering of chuckles. Was this a throwaway joke or a serious, long-term commitment? Do I truly believe this was an album painstakingly planned for seven years? Lucky for Sullivan, prophecies don’t require you to show your work.
Regardless of its origins, dope girl chronicles is clearly distinct from light is gone 2, which intentionally embraced a glitchy, percussive palette—inspired, Sullivan said, by trap music. Here, he mostly leans on what has been his bread and butter throughout his career. He has always had a way with an unadorned acoustic guitar, but dope girl chronicles has some of the most impressive finger-picking he’s ever done: the jumbled cascade of “love don’t come,” the dew-dapped instrumental “intermission,” the Van Zandt-ian “do a little dope.” This is all very much in Sullivan’s wheelhouse as a songwriter. That said, there are a few things here we haven’t heard him do before. A song like “cemetery,” with its thick, chunky chords, front-loaded drums and feedback-heavy vocals, imagines Field Medic sans the bedroom—a surprising turn, if not a particularly successful one.
Lyrically, dope girl chronicles is as gut-wrenching, evocative and clever as ever; a black light inspection of Sullivan’s own psyche. You don’t write a song like “do a little dope”—and center a record around it—without a keen sense of gallows humor. And yet, there’s a hopeful throughline running throughout the record, focused most squarely on the titular “dope girl.” Never has Sullivan’s lyrics painted such a cozy scene. “Tell me, what am I supposed to do when you’re kissing me awake?” he sings on “clear thoughts of morning,” before adding a swift “my love, her eyes go unadorned and see right through me.” Some moments are downright silly in their domestic bliss, such as the opening line of “silver girl,” where Sullivan muses: “Girl, your command of language has got me sprung, you express yourself just like Joan Didion.” So much of the Field Medic catalog features Sullivan working through things internally, so it’s nice to find him shifting the perspective here.
dope girl chronicles is unlikely to upend anyone’s year-end lists. It might well be, by its very nature, destined for a lifetime as a companion piece to its predecessor, something for the real OGs that might need to be rediscovered years down the line. Its very existence is evidence of Sullivan’s many devout fans holding him to a promise he made seven years ago. It might not have been a promise he truly intended on keeping, but it’s pretty incredible he got the chance to make good with an album that routinely delivers the best of what Field Medic has to offer.
Watch Field Medic’s Paste studio session from 2019 below.
Sean Fennell is a culture writer from Philadelphia attempting to listen, watch, and read every single thing he can get his hands on.
