Concretes, Kings of Convenience, and Badly Drawn Boy

The Concretes

Kings of Convenience

Badly Drawn Boy

At its outset, Astralwerks specialized primarily in ambient/techno music like the Chemical Brothers, Beth Orton, and Air. The 10-year-old Virgin/EMI imprint has broadened its focus and refined its cherry-picking skills in the past couple of years, a fortuitous development indeed. Astralwerks stuck to the Continent for its 2004 summer push, starting with the Concretes, an eight-strong sleepy-pop band from Stockholm, Sweden. The coed collective creates a distinctly VU/Mazzy Star feel, yet remains intimate even when it dilates. Trumpets and harps flesh out the lush, deceptively minimalist sound, while charmingly tortured syntax ("Loneliness is a friend of me") peppers the set list. Sleepy, but infectious. To the west is Norway's Kings of Convenience, the duo responsible for 2001's Quiet Is the New Loud. More quiet awaits on their third full-length, Riot on an Empty Street, but don't be deterred by "Homesick," a Simon & Garfunkel meta-homage whose hokiness is but a tiny misstep in an otherwise intoxicatingly sensual 45 minutes. Instrumentation is spare here, Eirik Glambek Bøe and Erlend Øye relying solely on their svelte harmonizing, a guitar, and the occasional banjo and violins. Riot's highpoint is "I'd Rather Dance With You," a wry examination of what happens when pretty people are drawn together but have nothing to say. Next, we jet across the North Sea to Old Blighty, where Badly Drawn Boy's fourth full-length, One Plus One Is One, awaits. While Damon Gough has been hard-pressed to top the genius of The Hour of Bewilderbeast, he comes close with this new set of songs exploring – wait for it – the nature of love, with the inexplicable addition of a Jethro Tull flute. "Year of the Rat" is the most expansive piece on the album, and it's the most moving, a choir of children's voices contrasting the images of hopeful isolation painted by Gough. It's a lovely end to this summer music tour at the hands of a small, New York-based label that's cultivated for itself the role of the worldly, urbane friend who's hip to all the cool, little-known artists from Scandinavia to the South Pacific.

(Concretes)

(Kings of Convenience; Badly Drawn Boy)