Paving Not Drowning

Speaking to Hot Press from her home in London, The Concretes’ softly-spoken vocalist Lisa Milberg is in contemplative mood. Her tentative demeanour mirrors the probable mindset of the band at the moment, as they slowly dust themselves off and begin anew after lead singer and founding member Victoria Bergsman announced she was quitting just hours before the group played on the Jonathan Ross show in July of last year. Speaking to Milberg, it seems Bergsman’s departure was greeted more with relief than regret by the other members of the band.
“That was on its way for a long time,” she says. “People wanted different things and there was a lot of tension. It meant that the last couple of years weren’t much fun for us.”

The night that Bergsman left, the remaining seven members contemplated the future over copious quantities of alcohol. Names like Fleetwood Mac, New Order, The Byrds and The Supremes were tossed around – bands that had kept going and been transformed after the loss of a key member. With Milberg having performed occasional vocal duties on the band’s earlier albums, she was the obvious choice to step up to the plate. And while she still drums on the record, the band were mindful of becoming the butt of any Phil Collins jokes, so a touring drummer was recruited. “It works to play drums and sing for the occasional song, because it’s a fun thing to watch, but maybe not for a full show,” says Milberg. “And it is kind of hard to do both at once!”

So how has all the turmoil influenced the Concretes’ new record, Hey Trouble? “Lyrically, I’ve tried not to dwell on things too much, but obviously everything that happened to the band sort of took over everyone’s life, so it affected the album a lot,” reckons Milberg. “Also, when we decided that we wanted to continue, it seemed like a good time to do a sort of a spring clean and make a fresh start musically.” With Milberg living in London and her colleagues still in their native
Sweden, much of the writing was done over email, with samples and suggestions passing back and forth in cyberspace. An interesting way to collaborate? “I liked it, it was a completely different experience from writing songs together, where everyone can pitch in, you can do
it in ‘real time’ and things move along quite swiftly,” says Milberg. “When I recorded something, then I had to email it and go though all this anxious waiting for opinions and suggestions to come through!”

Several of the songs on the record refer to either playing or listening to music. It's a subject that is at once appropriate and unusual for a musician to write about. "Well they're some of the few things I actually do!" she says. "It's kind of always been that way with my lyrics - there’s a track on the last album called ‘Song For The Songs’ that's like a 'thank you' to music." There was a more significant motiviation for writing about music this time around, however: "I’ve known Maria [Eriksson, the band's guitarist] since I was seven and last year was a really tough year for us. When we decided to continue we wanted to be sure it would be for the reasons that we formed the band to begin with - the good stuff! I tried to remember what those things were and music obviously was the key, but it felt like it hadn’t been for years."

Not satisfied with a headcount of seven, The Concretes have over the years employed several ‘honorary members’ on a rotating basis. Milberg doesn’t hestitate when asked who her dream collaborations would be. “There are so many - Jeff Lynne, Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno - a bunch of old men with good beards!” she laughs. In addition to her drumming and vocal duties, Milberg has also tried her hand at directing some of the band’s videos, with The Concretes having a
reputation as a very visual act. “To get people to listen to you, I think it makes sense to represent yourself in a way that reflects the music,” she says. “I think it’s all important – the videos, they way we dress, the way we look when we’re on stage. It’s not vanity – we’re just trying to paint a picture that makes sense.”

The Concretes headline the Saturday night of the Hard Working Class Heroes festival on September 29 in Dublin’s Tripod.