Artist: The Concretes
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Even though Laakso's band biography involves several break ups and reunions, it's basically a nice story of Swedish music business success. Their newest album "My gods", a decent interplay of twelve churned up songs, proves this very well: Released by the big label V2, produced by a certain Jari Haapalainen (Yes, right, that's the same guy who has worked with Ed Harcourt, Moneybrother, Kristofer Åström and The Concretes) and including some backing vocals by a very certain Nicolai Dunger. Well, of course a record isn't just about some famous names written on the booklet's last page. But even just focusing the music, "My gods" turns out to be a pleasant piece of melodic art. OK, it's probably not the catchiest album that has been released in Sweden during the last months, but still it has everything a good pop CD needs to have: Emotional tunes, guts to try out something new and a stick-out hit song ("High drama"). Markus Krunegård's characteristic voice underlines brilliantly the intimate lyrics which are thematically ranging from self-pity drowned in fuel to an ironic view on the junk of the hearts. Summing it up, Laakso has created an interesting and good-sounding audio portrait of the variety of emotions circulating around the all-time number-one-topic also known as "love".
- Janis Meissner
Download the single "Never the last time" from Sweden's The Soft Eyes: http://www.thesofteyes.com/
The band features Johan Sigerud from My Orchard, Daniel Värjö from The Concretes and Linda Hörnqvist from Marit Bergman's band.
Lookee here, a not-so-rosy review of The Concretes b-side collection "Layyourbattleaxedown": http://www.okayplayer.com/reviews/index.php/weblog/more/layyourbattleaxedown/
Pitchfork reports on The Concretes recording a new album with Saddle Creek engineer-in-residence Mike Mogis: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/05-07/27.shtml#concretes
Fluxblog posts the mp3 for The Concretes cover of "Miss you" by the Rolling Stones: http://www.fluxblog.org/2005/05/everybody-waits-so-long-m83-teen-angst.html
There's some good stuff on that "We love you" Swedish Stones tribute. Maybe I'll post a track sometime.
Check out an animated video for The Concretes track "Foreign country" by artist Peter Ahlberg : http://www.lickingfingers.com/music/foreign_country.mov
Astralwerks will be releasing a b-sides comp from The Concretes on July 26 entitled "Layourbattleaxedown". For those that are unaware, the band has released quite a lot of material over the years and it's about time they bundled up some of the hard-to-find stuff in one place. Tracklist:
01. Forces
02. Sugar
03. Lady December
04. The Warrior
05. Miss You
06. Oh Baby
07. Sand
08. Free Ride
09. Branches
10. Under Your Leaves
11. Seems Fine Shuffle
It's not new, but KEXP has some nice on-demand live stuff from The Concretes: http://www.kexp.org/aspnet_client/SpecialMediaGroup.aspx?rID=2299&pID=528&fID=1080
Search their archives for quite a few other Scandinavian artists as well.
Licking Fingers, the label run by The Concretes, will be releasing the debut album "Until death comes" from their friend Frida Hyvönen on March 30.
Better than Mando Diao, The Concretes and that Swedish guy from Placebo all mixed into one - here's The Radio Dept.! Not that it's too difficult to beat the previous mentioned trio, but what I'm trying to say is that Radio Dept. deserve to be famous, at least as famous as Abba were. This new EP once again proves how good Radio Dept. are, or actually, not only does it prove how good they are but it also shows how they amazingly enough have managed to become even better. I'm not the biggest shoegazing fan in the world, I admit, but Radio Dept. just makes my heart melt. This EP is a real treat and I pity the man who in 10 years time has to decide what songs to put on The Radio Dept. Greatest Hits album - will he choose all five songs on this EP? If not, what songs will he (sorry for my blatant sexism here) choose to discard? It's a shame though that every time I've seen Radio Dept. live they've always been a bit too shambolic and not really given their recorded material the proper treatment it deserves, but perhaps that has changed now.
- Simon Tagestam
Apparently The Concretes and The Caesars both had songs featured prominently on ads played during the Grammies broadcast. We'll see if it does anything for their careers.
The annual Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll is out and Scandinavian entries on the top album list include The Hives (#53), Dungen (#69), The Concretes (#80), Erlend Oye (#88), Annie (#90), Kings of Convenience (#101), Sahara Hotnights (#240), Luomo (#261) and Pan Sonic (#291). Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/04/
The Concretes are heading back to the UK for a few dates in mid-February:
02/17 - Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
02/18 - KOKO Club, NME Brats Night, London
02/20 - Concorde, Brighton
Frida Hyvönen will support.
Scandinavian highlights from the Pitchfork top 50 album list include The Concretes (#45), Jóhann Jóhannsson (#37), Björk (#19), Annie (#15), Erlend Øye (#14) and Dungen (#13): http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/top/2004/index.shtml
Laakso