Manchester’s younger sons The Courteeners have returned with a brave fourth album, ‘Concrete Love‘; they’re forever a youthful and inventive band that see the beauty in twisting heads, turning tables, and tearing out hearts.
Their experimentalism is exceptional, their madness amazing. The Courteeners can no longer be marginalised by the narrow-sights and small-sized minds of the judges of modern-day music.
Limited to pub jukeboxes? Not when they have the tunes to pack out palaces across the legendary localities of our globe with as much spite, snarl and seriousness as a real man whilst also being greatly brave, adventurous and innovating, providing some mystery beneath an ocean’s worth of prolific songwriting.
‘White Horses’ opens with atmospheric chants disturbed and distorted, lurching in the backdrop behind a disco drum-beat and a funky bass line which adds some colour to a baritone vocal seeped in reverb. From the first track the songs are clever, clear and are the mark of musicians with their hands firmly grasping the neck of any doubter. ‘How Good It Was’ has the tongue-in-cheek lyrics of kitchens, bedrooms and jackets in place, noticing that a broken heart will always come back to haunt the hand that cracked it, adding a sinister humour to the dour realities we face daily. A tumultuous drum beat, like dreamers forever forgetting themselves and slipping on the hand they lean upon, gently touches orchestration played traditional but echoing the contemporary, welcoming intimate studio noises and a voice that speak the truth in a way few Liam’s could pen.
The Courteeners have certainly grown, seeing the opportunity to develop and now cornering such chances with an album influenced by everything from synth-pop to post-punk, with industrial layers of weirdness that add a thick skin. ‘Small Bones’, a racing, rebellious recitation/rant of poetry put together with the scent of a fabulous pop-tune is a hypnotic, heartfelt catalyst of kisses, brass-band blaring, climax bubbling under the surface of all stylish attitudes, the Northern wordsmith we know so well fronting the band, telling tales and delivering tunes that will last far longer than the bricks and mortar which such grim observations are built around.
The album is certainly one bursting at the seams with magical flavours only few have tasted, the band’s willingness to want more forever pushing their dreams forward. ‘Has He Told You That He Loves You Yet?’ is a song to be sung on a riverboat somewhere when the sun always shines, a futuristic, fantastic and skydiving serenade of sounds that mesh together tightly, a number with hooks that couldn’t come catchier.
Despite cramming words, sharp and surreal, into every available space, the tunes are not overwhelmed by a clearly confident lyricist who recognises how a simple lyric can partner the most swaggering and towering of rock licks. Never a shy child of the great grim North, Liam Fray certainly knows how to put his point across when talking about the dark anecdotes that dictate our most rational of choices. ‘Black and Blue’ and ‘International’ make use of menacing space and sullen sounds, the pianos are louder, linking the keys to the industrialised drums which tick forward as though a clock is silently screaming at our lives.
The one thing this album never loses is its ability to constantly reinvent itself, but as time goes on the tunes become familiar, not in the repetitive sense, but in the utterly wonderful sense of constantly replenishing themselves. Ones that dig deep into the sexy, saucy strut of ‘Next Time You Call’ or ‘Saboteur’, that cradle seductively the doting emotions that overtake the aftermath of a bad decision; guitars strangled, blues sticky and swampy. Riff bitten, infected and stinging with a delicious trace of venom.
Equally, lead single ‘Summer’ comes with a different kind of confidence, making use of youth in a divine and dynamite chirp of goodwill and friendliness; an acoustic guitar progression once again twisting the bland rock and roll format, instead waltzing around a tune tangled in its own positive thoughts.
Welcoming and surrounding the coldest of hearts in warm blood, ‘Concrete Love’ inspires smiles only the warmest and most loving of seasons could catalyze.