Wednesday, April 28, 2004
The Concretes, The 100 Club
This is the hardest review I’ve had to write yet because, well, there is so little to write about. Tonight there are no support bands; The Concretes come on late (because of some technical problems with a tuner) and only play for 40 minutes. At about the time they play the final song (a cover of I Miss You by The Rolling Stones) they finally appear to be hitting their stride, so it’s a disappointment that they bugger off and don’t come back on for an encore.What they do play sits somewhere between Belle and Sebastian and that other great
Swedish pop band The Cardigans. The vocal style of lead singer Victoria Bergsman is very close to Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star - one of the greatest bands of the 90s and criminally overlooked by the British music press at the time. On paper this looks great but tonight they just don’t seem to pull it off. Maybe it’s because most of the people in the room have (if lucky) heard 2 tracks – Say Something New, the new Single, and New Friend, which appeared on the excellent Counter Culture 2003 compilation by Rough Trade records at the end of last year. Or maybe they’re like B&S who are notorious for playing hit or miss gigs (I’ve been to a couple of dire B&S gigs, and at least one really great one).
But it’s not all bad news. Victoria, with her Swedish accent and broken English, is sure to break the hearts of a certain type of indie-boy (the type who has posters of Betty Blue on the wall of his student accommodation) and when they put their foot down and rock out with the twin guitar sounds of Daniel Värjö and Maria Eriksson they are really impressive (I remember reading a review of The Cardigans back when their Life album came out that said they were a metal band in the body of fey indie posters and this comparison holds for The Concretes).The 100 club is ideally suited to this kind of music – the stage is plenty big enough for the nine musicians (including a horn section, another similarity with B&S, and a full time percussionist –
surely just an excuse to bring a friend over from Sweden on a jolly) and just small enough to mask the fact that tonight is not a sell out show.I am absolutely sure that this band have the potential to be great, they just need to get some more live dates under their belt, crank out a few singles and hope that they don’t get ignored by the music press (they have the marketing might of EMI behind them, so this should’nt be a problem) . If you fancy finding out what all the fuss is about they’re playing at Kings College on June 23rd and tickets are available from gigsandtours.
