Dave Simpson 

The Concretes, In Colour

(EMI)
  
  

In Colour

The Concretes' second album is as changeable as the seasons. Songs such as On the Radio and Change in the Weather are full of the joys of spring, beautifully crafted concoctions of sunny melodies, plinking pianos and, the increasingly de rigueur pop instrument, the glockenspiel.

Produced in Stockholm by long-time Bright Eyes collaborator Mike Mogis, the album snuggles up between the band's fellow Swedes the Cardigans and the Mamas and the Papas, but never settles. Your Call - a duet between Victoria Bergsman and the Magic Numbers' Romeo Stodart - documents communication breakdown; even Sunbeams is shadowed by gathering clouds. The sense of lurking darkness contains their most exquisite moments, such as the aching guitar solo on A Way of Life.

The same song's line "The colour of your eyes has faded/ They're not as brown as I remember them as a child" is somehow typical of In Colour's dreamlike, almost intangible appeal.

 

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