The Concretes were originally formed in Stockholm, Sweden, way back in 1995. They started out as just a trio – Victoria Bergsman (vocalist), Maria Ericsson (guitars), and Lisa Milberg (drums) – but within three more years, their ranks had blossomed to eight full-time members. They released a handful of EPs in their early years, and released a compilation that collected the first two of these for easier consumption, but their full-length debut didn’t come about until eight years into their existence on the scene.
“The Concretes”, however, wasn’t my introduction to this Swedish indie pop collective. I didn’t actually hear their music until they released their sophomore album, “In colour”, in North America in 2006 and by that time, Bergsman, the group’s principal lyricist, was already on her way out. I loved the album and for me, her frail and precious delivery and how it felt just this side out of step with the band’s technicolour sound, was what really sold me on the group. So I didn’t really pay that much attention when they resurfaced the following year with a new album with Milberg stepping out from behind the drum kit to take up the mic. I did, however, go back and pick up the debut and found much to love there as well.
The first single to be released off the debut record was “You can’t hurry love”, a two minute wonder that is definitely not a Supremes cover. Instead, it calls to mind the girl groups from the Phil Spector school: JAMC guitars, horns, handclaps, shuffling drums, and woo woo woo woo backing vocals. It’s a party turned up to eleven, a howling at the sun, a whole fireworks show set off at once, and a running of the bulls at rush hour. And at the head of it all, Bergsman is ‘racing’ to the finish line at her own pace.
“Boy
Do you hear me say
Do you hear me say now
Love
Ain’t far
Well I didn’t mind
I didn’t mind
I didn’t mind
You can’t hurry love
You can’t hurry love”
Those are the words, repeated twice through, and the refrain comes again, just in case you didn’t get it the first time. Pop perfection.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.
Things have been quieter around these parts over the last couple of months. I went from posting to these pages two or three times a week back in August to averaging just a couple of posts each for the months of September and October. It’s been a rough year all around and my wife and I took a look around mid-August and realized that the summer was almost over. We decided to spend as much time outside as we could and tried to do things that would make things feel like normalcy was returning. All that being said, we’ve had a good couple of months and now, I feel like I’m ready to start picking up the proverbial pen with more regularity again, though nothing like the pace at which I had going prior to my unexpected mini hiatus.
I should point out now that just because I’ve been quiet here, that this doesn’t mean I haven’t been listening to music. Far from it. I’ve continued to spin records whenever I get the chance and I am often streaming new music on the Spotify while doing chores or while working away at the computer. And yeah, there’s been lots of new music released over the last few months, more than I expected to find in coffers when I sat down to try to put together this third part of my New tunes of 2021 series of playlists.
“Third part?”, you might be asking.
Why, yes. This is part three. In fact, this is my third year running, doing these multi-part playlists. Typically, each part collects twenty-five or so songs, representing the musical output for a three month segment of the year. You can go back and have a peek at the songs that made my world turn for the first six months of 2021 here and here if you’d like.
Otherwise, I’ll stop my blathering and lead you off towards some of my songs of summer. Highlights include:
Drug Store Romeos have more than a great name, “Frame of reference” off the group’s debut shows off some peppy synth dreams worth mooning over
I’m not all that familiar with Australian indie rockers, Gang of Youths, and I only checked out their new EP to listen to a certain Elbow cover but instead, fell hard for “The angel of 8th Ave.”
It was “Scratching at the lid”, this dreamy but rocking first track that I heard in advance of Piroshka’s second album that had me looking hard and finally succumbing to that album pre-order button
Angel Olsen has some fun with an EP of reinterpreted 80s classics but this slowed down robotic take on Men Without Hats’ “Safety dance” takes the cake for me
Toronto artist Josh Korody aka Breeze has put together an album that sounds so much like the music me and my friends grew up on, we almost jokingly convinced my friend Tim that “Come around” was a lost 90s nugget
“Heart land”, an ear worm the likes of which I haven’t heard from The Vaccines since their blistering debut
And closing things off is Kurt Vile’s rip-roaring rendition of “Run run run”, just one of a number of great covers on the new Velvet Underground* & Nico tribute album, “I’ll be your mirror”
For those who don’t use Spotify or if the embedded playlist below doesn’t work for you, here is the entire playlist as I’ve created it, complete with links to YouTube videos:
Belle and Sebastian were never supposed to be anything more than a project, one that recorded and released a bunch of material in a short period and faded away into the night. They definitely weren’t supposed to be a successful indie pop group that amassed a rabid following on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and were still releasing new work more than twenty five years in. They started off along the right track, releasing three albums and four EPs in the span of three years but then something happened that derailed their trajectory. I won’t formulate any theories or hazard any guesses but I will say that the result was the group’s fourth long player and everything that happened afterwards.
“Fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant” was my first experience with listening to a new Belle and Sebastian album just after it was released. I had gotten into the Scottish collective after had they released their third album, “The boy with the arab strap”, on suggestion from my university friend Darrell, who said you can’t go wrong with any of their releases, just pick one. I went with the green album cover and worked backwards from there. As it turned out, “Fold your hands child” was also the first of their albums that I didn’t take to right away.*
The fourth album’s title was taken from a piece of graffiti that frontman Stuart Murdoch had found scrawled in a university toilet. The front cover is a photo that he took of Icelandic twins, Gyða and Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir (both from the band Múm), and the back cover is a deconstructed photo of the view from the window of a laundromat he frequented. The music on the album, though, was not all Stuart. Indeed, it furthered the trend first brokered on “The boy with the arab strap” of more collaboration within the group, shared songwriting and vocal duties. The recording sessions were difficult and took longer than previous ones, which Murdoch attributes to the darker tone and more complex arrangements and song structures. Murdoch has said the album reflects perfectly what the band’s life was like at that point in time and changed everything going forward. It was the last one that featured founding bassist Stuart David and the second last to feature Isobel Campbell.
“Fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant” still isn’t my favourite album by the group but that doesn’t make it bad at all. In fact, I have grown to appreciate it and it now holds a very special place in my heart. Each of its eleven songs brings back a flood of memories, especially the three I have picked for you to sample.
”The chalet lines”: Talk about dark. Songs don’t get much more depressing than this one, nor can you find opening lines more attention grabbing than: “He raped me in the chalet lines”. Stuart Murdoch’s voice and the soft way he uses it to say those words and of course, the tentative piano notes in the opening, pretty much set the tone and signal this to be a real feel bad story. It was inspired by the experiences of an acquaintance of Murdoch’s at a type of holiday camp where the “chalets” are laid out in a row, the very same type of which was where he met the Icelandic twin sisters that grace the album’s cover during a music festival party. The protagonist was raped during such a party at the camp where she worked and she struggles with feeling different now than her friends, not being understood, not reporting the offence, and worrying that she had gotten pregnant. The minimalism – voice, piano, and plaintive cello – and the imagery (“Her face was just a smear on the pane”) do plenty to keep the two and a half minute dirge from taking a detour into sentimentality.
”The model”: Track two on the album is a real danceable number, the kind where you close your eyes and flail about with abandon and a lack of grace. In this way, it reminds me of my favourite B&S number, the title track off the previous album, and much like that one, the words are a litany, a stream of consciousness, a story within a story within a story. But here, in amongst the harpsichord backbone and flute and horn flourishes, one may find slightly more complexities and melodies and tighter pop sensibilities. On vocals, Murdoch relinquishes total control, allowing Stevie Jackson to voice four of the forty lines, the sixth line of every stanza. This jogs the head a bit, suggesting a different point or interjection, playing with the reliability of the confession. Perhaps it’s not just a simple pop song, then? With this lot, it never is. “But you wouldn’t laugh at all and I wonder what the boy was thinking. The picture was an old collage of something classical, the model with a tragic air.”
”I fought in a war”: My final pick for you is the opening track on the album, a song, in my opinion, which is the one with the closest resemblance to the work on their earlier albums. And given that it was the first song I heard upon my first go through the album, it was instantly recognizable and in this way, feels like the group’s technique of weening its fans from everything that came before. But even here, the subject matter is darker, the tone heavy, a weight on the breezy melody and the bright horn blares. Beware, though, don’t get taken in by the title and lyrics and fall into the open trap left by Murdoch into thinking this a protest song. He has said that it is in fact inspired by a Salinger story, “For Esmé – with love and squalor”, one that I read ages by sadly, don’t exactly remember so I may have to re-read. I imagine though it might be about a lost love, given the metaphorical imagery of the song. “And I reminded myself of the looks you gave when we were getting on, and I bet you’re making shells back home for a steady man to wear round his neck, well it won’t hurt to think of you as if you’re waiting for this letter to arrive because I’ll be here quite a while.” Lovely stuff.
*And from what I’ve read by the critics and the like, I don’t think I was the only one.
Check back two Thursdays from today for album #4. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:
My (life in) music lists 