Album Review

The Concretes – WYWH

• 3rd Nov 2010

It’s likely that most people are aware of The Concretes through their ex-singer Victoria Bergsman, who has in the past few years helped out on one lovely whistly song and done a lovely acousticy Guns n Roses cover that both ended up on a bunch of adverts. They may also be those aware that they’re from one of the Scandanavian countries (Sweden to be precise). It has been three whole years since their last record ‘Hey Trouble’, the first of the post-Bergsman era, but as soon as ‘WYWH’ begins, none of that matters. ‘WYWH’ (which apparently stands for ‘Wish You Were Here’, and is not, as I initially thought, an invented nordic-esque word, Sigur Ros style) is a swoonsome album that glues some entirely welcome disco sounds onto the glacial folk-pop they do best.

Opener ‘Good Evening’ sets the tone. Made available online several months before this album’s release, it has lost none of its power with overfamiliarity. It’s the sound of Studio 54 if it had been built on the side of Mount Eyjafjallajokul, and in its 6-plus minutes it encapsulates immacutely what makes The Concretes worth re-investigating. Now bumped up to an eight-piece, and with faerie-like former drummer Lisa Milberg fully entrenched as their new vocalist, ‘WYWH’ may have been heralded as some sort of second coming – the moment The Concretes go disco! – but they’ve added the new influences to their sound organically. And the songs all benefit from this new approach, the likes of ‘My Ways’ sounding fuller and more vital than they might have before. The new outlook has influenced the lyrics as well – on the upbeat ‘All Day’ Milberg’s hungover suggestion ‘we are gonna stay in bed all day’ is sure to elicit an overwhleming response of “YES BLOODY PLEASE” from the male bloggerati. Yet there are also delicate moments that push Milberg’s voice to the fore; ‘I Wish We’d Never Met’ is a sparsely beautiful kiss-off to a partner, made all the more haunting by its rarity.

Unfortunately the album doesn’t quite manage to maintain the excellent hit-rate of the first half, and a few tracks towards the end start to merge into each other. However, the closing title track is good enough to bring the record back round and leave a lasting impression – bookending your album with arguably its two strongest tracks isn’t entirely novel but it ensures that ‘WYWH’ ends on a high.

Hopefully there will be an audience for ‘WYWH’. It’s been three years since ‘Hey Trouble’ was released to largely indifferent reviews, and in that time there have been plenty of acts to fill that wistful-yet-lovely Nordic gap, with Lykke Li, Robyn and the more avant-garde Fever Ray the outstanding candidates for most people’s female Scandanavian pop needs in 2010. Additionally, while The Concretes are not mellow enough to be caught up in the current chillwave outbreak, neither are they dancey enough for the disco-pop brigade. Yet none of this should detract from the fact that ‘WYWH’ is a triumphant comeback, and one whose mirrorball-in-an-igloo ethos definitely deserves your attention.