Never has an album been so aptly named: first off, on their last tour, The Concretes has all their equipment stolen from the Bowery Ballroom; next, their lead singer Victoria collapsed in Boston and the remainder of the tour had to be canned; then, if that wasn’t enough, Victoria decided to quit the band just before their performance on the Jonathan Ross show. Perhaps she had seen his performance in ‘Extras’ and decided that enough was enough.
After this run of bad luck, many a weaker band would have tossed their collective instruments onto E-bay and become teachers, but not so The Concretes. Drum major Lisa Milberg stepped, or sat, into the role of lead singer and so they were reborn. ‘Hey Trouble’ is the first album featuring the new line up and serves both as spirited pop defiance and cathartic exorcism of any bad mojo remaining from previous mishaps. It also has a fair few stunning tunes on it; a couple of snoozers, too.
You’d think you’d stumbled into a full-on folk beard-stroking session on hearing the opening eponymous track. Pipe organs, mandolins, simple percussion and piano play second fiddle to Lisa Milberg and Anna Maria Espinosa’s intertwined vocals, portraying optimism and pain, recognition and resignation. Lisa’s chirpy twang may come on top, but it is Anna who has the last word: “Before you go, give me your number.” Who was being positive again?
There’s a similar strength in frailty that runs throughout this album, cued in by that last lingering line. ‘A Whales Heart’ dumps the band in the Jesus & Mary Chain’s cold and draughty recording hanger, but the warmth and sentiment of the song’s naivety glows within: “This is how love travels in style” sings Lisa, hopefully. At the other end of the scale, ‘Firewatch’ is beautifully melodic, with lobe-caressing flutes that slowly march across your heart, but Lisa’s voice takes on that sweet but damaged sound that Sarah Nixey captured so beautifully when she sang for Black Box Recorder: she’s been in the wars and survived.
It is those more subtle shows of strength that work best here, though. ‘Oh Boy’ and ‘Keep Yours’ are both played for rock-pop laughs, but somehow Lisa’s voice doesn’t want to play. ‘Oh Boy’ is all Mariachi horns, raucous guitars and loud pulsing drums, but the vocals lag behind, awkwardly manoeuvring around incongruous lines like: “Oh Boy, you really did it this time/ Let me tell you we need a new plan.” ‘Keep Yours’ is a better effort, a Duran Duran single pummelled into ‘The Model’ and stitched up with playground cruelty. The abrupt change from verse to chorus sometimes jars against the vocal delicacy, but once Lisa has a line like, “Keep yours and I’ll hold onto mine’ to get her chords around, it’s sing-song essence works the dynamic out. Come to think of it, it’s better than I thought: the electronics and guitars knit together like delegates at a wool conference and it’s short, simple and tart guitar solo is neither unnecessary or indulgent – now that’s good pop!
Yes, pop it is, and good pop needs it’s soppy moments of unashamed abandon to higher forces, be they nostalgia, infatuation or apathy (Swedish pop can be quite poignant – look at Abba’s later ‘oops, what happened to our marriages?’ work). ‘Kids’ is a beautifully mawkish anthem to adolescent friendship, first music loves and trying to regain those lost moments when you know they are gone forever. The beats and keyboards are cheesy, the vocals swing up and down like a seesaw, but the chorus, “Can we play it from the start/let’s relive just the chorus” is full of bubble gum bitterness. It even manages to name check Stardust and the Pet Shop Boys – pop, remember? ‘Didion,’ electro-beaten and narcoleptic infatuation is comfortingly Sapphic, but it is the collaboration with Lambshop’s Kyle Field that gets the award for ‘Beautiful but Hopeless’ pop song. The moody slide guitar, glistening bells and distant glockenspiels pick out the two voices somnambulant movements. “It’s a very special Tuesday/in an everyday disguise.’ Busy doing nothing for a generation that didn’t have the benefit of slacker culture. Poor dears.
Of course, it’s not all fantastic. Now Lisa has both rhythm and vocal duties, the beats veer towards the simple and functional school, but this does become predictably underwhelming: you long for a 3/4 beat on ‘Souvenirs’ that never comes, and ‘Oh No’ is just a slow sentiment too far. ‘Are You Prepared’ raises the game at the tail end of the album with it’s fifties do-wop chorus and cheeky pop sensibilities, but it up to ‘Simple Song’ to usher us out of the album with the same folksy sound that ushered us in, this time leaving us with yet another unrequited love.
‘Simple’ sums up the album quite nicely, though. The sound is colossal at times, but the songs remain modest throughout. Lisa has done a good job, picking up the speakysingy job and joins a great tradition of singing drummers that includes Karen Carpenter and err, didn’t Fyfe Ewing do vocals on ‘Teethgrinder?’ I suppose the problem is that, being so drawn between two different disciplines, something’s got to give. Perhaps it’s all a bit too trouble free?
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