Boyoubetterunow
(Up)
Swedish sextet settles into the tire tracks of the Cardigans with some minimal and occasionally chamber-flecked pop. There are lounge-pop pleasantries carrying songs like “Vacation” and “Give A Little”, where vocalist Victoria is backed up by chiming and curling guitar hooks. Victoria (they only seem to be revealing their first names) doesn’t possess the kind of dizzy/vulnerable charm that the Cards’ Nina Persson has and isn’t quite as accomplished at polishing a melody. To their credit, the Concretes don’t have a hint of the conceited Grand Pop Message that undid the last Cardigans album, and that makes the band’s lo-fi sound stick to the ribs a little longer. It’s easy to get behind the homemade swagger of something “Cabaret”, where a wobbly horn pitches in on the chorus and the whole brew goes down like The Raincoats filling in for a hotel lounge act that missed their nightly set at The Stockholm Inn because they were waiting for their dealer to show up. “Waiting For My Man” ain't quite what the violin and viola contributions evoke here, but they do leave enough dirt on the sound to at least suggest that they have heard “I’ll Be Your Mirror”.
As a debut recording, then, Boyoubetterunow works well enough, and leaves the listener with at least a curiosity for what a second recording might hold (do they stay with the lo-fi Swedish lounge pop or perhaps evolve into something more aggressive or more polished?). And just the sheer number of records we’ve heard at Stinkweeds this year that leave you so unmoved that you can barely remember the bands name, much less care what their second album sounds like indicates that The Concretes debut is solidly on the thumbs-up side.
Stinkweeds, 2000
