The Concretes - 'The Concretes' (EMI)
4/5
By: Toby L
Fill a studio with a mountain of instruments, get eight Scandinavians to make a heaving, bloody racket, and what do you get?
Not The Concretes. Instead, they pick up the musical tools and mould and meld an attractive mass of orchestral pop both beauteously understated in its whimsy, but massive. It's an endearing cacophony if ever we did hear one.
Yes, the band's eponymous debut for majors EMI is a scintillating, classy affair - eleven romantic, sentimental songs of strings, brass and sumptuous, female vocals that lilt in a sassy fashion only Swedish vixens can. Of the matter - 'Chico' is a hypnotic, wonderful dollop of Bacharach grandeur, 'You Can't Hurry Love' is the jaunty, kitsch pop single and 'New Friend' is stark, naive magic, replete with scintillating 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' organ.
'Diano Ross', meanwhile, throbs like Pulp in the chords of Bowie's 'Heroes', before descending into a parping chorus of precision psychedelia, 'Warm Night' boasts sumptuous, waltzing keyboards amusingly akin to old-skool maestro Klaus Wunderlich, 'Foreign Country' is barely two minutes - a minimalist, piano-vox duet - while 'Seems Fine' is uplifting sunshine-pop, and 'Lovin Kind' is almost-country. The final two keep up the hallmark of consistency - with the sombre bliss of a closing 'This One's For You' as dreamlike and affecting as they get, what with its dashings of harp and classical warmth.
Then it hits you: the sheer rarity of such pristine elegance and non-ingratiating introspection. When showcased this intimately, The Concretes gleam a light and colour few others can match.
Artists in this article: The Concretes
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