The Concretes - Chico

"Fill my heart, fill my heart, fill my heart with blood."

Album: The Concretes [debut album]
Genre: Indie Pop, Chamber Pop, Twee Pop
Recorded: 
Album Release: 2003
Single Release:
Length: 5:07
Producer: Jari Gaapalainen
Vocalist: Victoria Bergsman
Label: Licking Fingers Records

Official Audio

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 200 thousand
YouTube Music: Over 25 thousand

Instruments

Includes bass, drums, glockenspiel, guitar, horns, strings

Details

• Licking Fingers Records is owned and managed by The Concretes
• Another five minute symphony from the Nordic eight-piece which has psychedelic undertones. 'Chico' is a triumphant, vibrant swell of a song with simplistic vocals about a friend, or "chicofriend", as he's referred to in the lyrics, helping the singer now she's "out of love".
  
  
• The Swedish group had eight members when they released their debut album, but they started out with only three, all female, in Stockholm ten years earlier. They make beautiful music. The instrumentations are lush, the sentiments maudlin. It's layered, as the emotion swells, but quieter in sections, which leaves the space necessary for the vocals to thrive.
  
  In any group with so many members the songs become a negotiation about space and how to fill it, with what, and when. Everyone can't play at the same time, because a band isn't an orchestra, and the reason why boils down to vocals. The human voice conveys emotion better than any other instrument, making it the focal point of almost every major song in the last one hundred years. But it can be easily drown out.
  
  Most bands are five or fewer people, not only because it keeps costs down, but, crucially, because it allows the voice room to breathe. The Concretes carefully take the opposite approach. They sometimes tour with over ten accompanying musicians, making for a grand total nearly twenty people playing on a crowded stage.
  
  It comes as no surprise then that it took the band ten years to make an album. I, for one, am glad they did. Most music doesn't sound like this, the logistics are too difficult to manage, the artistic results too muddy. But when it's done right, it provides the listener with a distinct experience to relish, and the self-titled debut album from The Concretes is certainly that.
  

Artwork