The logistics of rock 'n' roll aren't glamorous. While Page, Plant, Jones & Bonham were getting ink for the holes they left in hotel room walls, some poor schlub who worked for the band was on the phone, discussing terms of payment for damages. And when that call ended, he had to make sure the trucks hit the road for the next city on time. Most big tours are actually registered corporations, and they're insured out the ass, but chances are, no one in the audience knows that, because it's just not what people want to hear about their music.
Outside of superstar acts and their traveling caravans, though, you have the more common occurrence of a band jamming themselves into a single van, looking for a place to stay every night and dealing with a different promoter in every city, and this is no less fraught with tedious details-- in the end, everyone's just trying to make a living, and if everything doesn't come together like it should, well, everybody loses. Trekking around and making group decisions is difficult enough when you have three or four band members and the occasional lackey, but it's even more ridiculous when you've expanded your lineup to a full-on octet. Just try scheduling studio time for eight people with other things going on in their lives.
The Concretes, who first blossomed almost a decade ago as an all-female trio in their native Stockholm, have engaged in just such as expansion project. And although they admit that sometimes eight is a few too many members, they have no plans to kick anyone out for the time being, preferring to stick to their pluralistic, collective way of doing things. The band's democratic process is immediately evident in the music of their self-titled album, which is essentially their debut long-player (their only previous LP-length release, Boyoubetterunow, was a stateside compilation of two early EPs).
So even though it took them nearly 10 years to cut a full-length, it seems to have been worth the wait-- the tracks on The Concretes are easily their most accomplished, fluid statement to date. Vocalist Victoria Bergsman initially seems to be rather firmly at the helm, her hazy Edith Frost-y croon providing an axis for the band's swirling Mazzy Starscape. But as the album wears on, it becomes clear that the band is on equal footing with her. She's cast almost totally adrift on "Lonely as Can Be", riding rapids of noisy guitar and battling the two-member horn section for melodic supremacy. At any given moment, the music might peel back to reveal a delicate piano or organ motif, only to close back over in a wash of cymbals and massed backing vocals.
And even with all that going on, The Concretes still rope in a dozen collaborators, including a string quintet and a harpist, who lend an ethereal hand to closer "This One's for You", the band's most overt nod to Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See. While much of the record dwells in deliberately paced big sky country, The Concretes do whip up two amazing up-tempo pop tunes. "You Can't Hurry Love" is not a Supremes cover, despite the presence of a song three tracks later titled "Diana Ross". Rather, it's a bouncy (and exceedingly short, at just 1:56) blast of summer that sounds more like The Jesus & Mary Chain than Phil Collins. "Seems Fine" opens with a horn theme while drummer Lisa Milberg lays down a surf beat, and the band runs through just about every conceivable instrumental combination at their disposal through the verses. And again, it's got concision going for it, running through dozens of variations on a simple theme in barely two minutes.
As tough as it may sometimes be to sift through eight different opinions in search of a definitive decision, it sometimes works to a band's advantage: Groups like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Broken Social Scene face the same obstacle, yet manage to consistently overcome. So maybe there's a democracy at work within a larger group dynamic that can yield greater results-- or perhaps great minds simply think alike.
