Concrete information

Stockholm, summer ‘95. Three girls in love with pop music decide they can make as good a fist of it as anyone.

They grab three instruments at random. They are Lisa Milberg (drums), Maria Eriksson (guitar) and Victoria Bergsman who becomes the singer by default. Being city girls, they take inspiration from Stockholm’s most popular building material and call themselves The Concretes.

Nine years later and three have become eight, and then some. Various domestic releases have led to the album The Concretes, a shimmering collection of left-field pop music that references the likes of Mazzy Star and Diana Ross along the way.
Although it’s become a bit of a cliché already when discussing the band, The Concretes really do come across as more of a bizarre family than a group.
“We’re both”, agrees guitarist Daniel Värjö. “The band started as a trio but we’ve grown. Over the last four years we’ve really become a band. It’s almost like the start of it now. It’s the longest time that the same members have been around”.
They’ve also become a good deal more focussed, even going as far as to rehearse the songs before they recorded them this time.
“It became much more serious when I joined and we started to work on the album”, Daniel says. “All eight of us were really involved in the making of the album. Everyone has a veto on everything, It takes a long time to do things but when we’re finished everyone is really excited about it. I think that’s a really beautiful thing, it makes us unique. It’s a hard process and a long process but what comes out makes everything worth it”.
Indeed The Concretes are the perfect example of democracy in action.
“Everyone is responsible for their part - Victoria writes all the lyrics – but everyone always has ideas about everything so there’s always a discussion. We sit in a circle at our rehearsal place and just talk about music”.
Part of the charm of The Concretes is the sheer expanse of its sound – something that Daniel puts down to the appearance of the large number of Honorary Concretes who swell the band’s ranks.
“We decided that eight people isn’t enough sometimes so we have to bring in some more,” he says. “They’re really good musicians and really good friends so if there is an instrument that none of us can play we have to call in an honorary Concrete”.
Given the band’s determination to do things their own way, it’s perhaps no surprise that they have so far released everything on their own label.
“It was very much our own choice because we wanted to be in control of everything from scratch; all the music, all the videos, all the PR,” Daniel explains. “That was the only way for us to do it in the beginning. We still have our own company in Scandinavia. A lot of bands do it, I think it’s more common in Sweden. It was kind of natural for us and the music business accepts it”.

The Concretes play Dublin’s Temple Bar Music Centre on July 29 as part of Bud Rising.