Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 13/03/06
Label: EMI

A band sadly nowhere near as tough as its name, The Concretes make the sort of marketably drippy indie pop your dad's been craving since he got bored of The Magic Numbers sometime last autumn. "In Colour" fuses the harmonising, hey-ho sunniness of the aforementioned (with whom the Swedish octet have toured) with the silver-gilded melodies of The Sundays, and is fronted by the kind of brittle, enigmatic, sibilant-emphasising blonde we've expected from every Scandinavian band since Agnetha Faltskog first purred into a mic.

On the surface it's an undeniably appealing package, and craftwise, there's much to admire. Producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes / Rilo Kiley) is at the helm for this follow-up to 2004's self-titled debut album and has tugged the band out of their earlier Mazzy Star-like haze into something brighter, and at times so dangerously sweet it should come with a toothbrush. Warm and nostalgic, mid-tempo art pop sculpted with lashings of tinkly xylophone, subtly tailored brass, gently finger-picked acoustic guitar, swirly organ, and other pretty noises work together as quietly and cooperatively as nuns at a knitting bee, while singer Victoria Bergsman sounds so wan you wonder when she last ate.

At best this approach translates into tracks like dreamy, early 90s-sounding shoegazer "Sunbeams", which is reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins, and the comical "Song For The Songs" - an ancient house music piano riff teamed with zippy, conversational strings and perky lyrics like "I loved a cray-see man from Mexico". The upbeat "Fiction" might be an early Belle And Sebastian album filler, accelerating slowly but surely from a simple rhythm to an ecstatic climax of horns, flutes and "ooh"s.

Otherwise, however, the album is stacked with bland dough such as the none-more-inoffensive "On the Radio" with its Carpenters-style piano intro, not to mention "Change In The Weather" and "Grey Days", which are pure Corrs, complete with off-the-peg, Celtic fiddle-dee-dee flourishes. Romeo "Magic Numbers" Stodart's duet with drummer Lisa Milberg on relationship dirge "Your Call" is, given the bands' musical kinship, about as surprising as rain on a Bank Holiday and - on an album which is crying out for something more edgy than a plump hippy with a girl's voice - about as welcome.

Watch where you step, people. This concrete's so wet you could lose your Birkenstock in it.

    by Anna Britten