The Concretes 'The Concretes' album

Stockholm, summer '95. Three girls in love with pop music decide they can make as good a fist of it as anyone.

They grab three instruments at random. They are Lisa Milberg (drums), Maria Eriksson (guitar), and Victoria Bergsman who becomes the singer by default. Being city girls, they take inspiration from Stockholm's most popular building material and call themselves The Concretes.

More like a weird family than a conventional pop group, they continue to grow, making room for some boys by the time of their overseas debut EP in 1999. Now six strong, their sound is full but somehow minimal, melancholic with the odd trumpeted intrusion. Victoria's voice is warm and conspiratorial - some mention Diana Ross and some say Hope Sandoval. Either way it's affecting, effective, a thing of beauty.

Just months later there's another EP in the UK — Lipstick — again on their own Licking Fingers label because "most other labels out there suck in one way or another." A pattern is emerging — woozy time signatures, cockeyed waltzes, keening words of restrained but intense passion.

Up Records in the US take note and issue the EPs together as Boyoubetterunow. The sleeve features photos of the band's mothers. Hours of fun are had matching up mums with Concretes. Also in the States there's a third EP called Nationalgeographic on the ill-named Above Ground label. The owner mysteriously holes himself up in Seattle with all of the copies.

Now it's the year 2000 and there are eight Concretes; welcome Ludvig Rylander (saxophone), Ulrik Karlsson (trumpet), Martin Hansson (bass), Per Nystrom (organ), and Daniel Varjo (guitar). Unless it's one of their rare live appearances in which case there may be a dozen more auxiliary members. They make their UK live debut at 93 Feet East on Brick Lane in December. Though they are spilling off stage with their glockenspiels, saxophones and bells, they sound tiny and twilit, like a child's Christmas on the edge of the Arctic circle.

The Concretes make a brave decision in 2002: before they record their first, full album they will rehearse the songs. Up to now, they have lived in a Lukas Moodysson-like atmosphere of communal democracy. Enter producer Jari Haapalainen, mandolin under one arm. He takes them to a house in the country where they work day and night for five days under his benign dictatorship. The result is a fabulous single, “You Can't Hurry Love,” (UK only) followed by a fully realized, self-titled album which knocks Sweden for six in 2003.

Every song is different and spectacularly strong. Their trademark melancholy bonhomie finds wings on the gorgeous “Warm Night,” is built into a concrete wall of sound on “Say Something New,” and even grabs a little bolero in an oblique homage to Diana Ross. There are by now even more honorary Concretes, including the football/pop crossover star Nicolai Dunger.

In 2004, and now signed to Astralwerks, the sound is identifiably Concretes. They still have the same ideals, share the same politics, buy the same records. Even if Maria is now hanging out in the Swedish countryside, Lisa is addicted to ebay, and Victoria is more at home with watercolours. She used to spend weeks at a time drawing pictures of birds’ faces. These days, sewing borders around her paintings floats her boat.

The Concretes are anti-rock and exquisite, pro-pop and brand new and unique. They sound like a clear night in November, standing high above the city, with a not-quite-identifiable yearning in your heart.

The band is:
Victoria Bergsman, Maria Eriksson, Martin Hansson, Ulrik Karlsson,
Lisa Milberg, Per Nystrom, Daniel Varjo, Ludvig Rylander

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The Concretes - The Concretes