Most European bands would have us believe that their lives consist of pixie-like escapades involving bears, rabbits and the occasional talking book. Take Bjork for instance, charmingly silly, marvellously surreal, frighteningly innocent and as cute as a button in a bewildering Brothers Grimm meets Salvidor Dali meets Dora The Explorer fashion. Fantastic nature. That’s what she says to me. Same thing with The Concretes. Something nice, but something strange. Something freaky. Read the band’s biography on the Shout Out Loud website and you’ll find that this quirky little Swedish pop quintet fall into a similar camp with a story that’s as uncomplicated (and clearly as mad) as cheese. They meet as children, listen to similar records, form a band and find a new friend that plays the keyboards called Bebban – who also happens to be a girl – make a little demo, get a little deal with a little record company and then a big deal with a big record company. Sounds simple? Well it is. Especially to our cynical Anglo sensibilities. Worryingly so. So when they tender an album that’s as straightforward as their story and as trouser-stirringly tuneful too, then you naturally assume there to be catch. But there isn’t. New single ‘The Comeback’ rattles along like the delicious and infectious Pixies/Cardigans chimera it clearly is, ‘Very Loud’ builds to a frantic, pandemonious sea-shanty climax, ‘Please Please Please’ jangles snugly from one lobe of your heart to the other and ‘100 Degrees’ skips breezily across forever like grab-bag of The Cure’s greatest hits.
Whilst Adam’s vocals sit somewhere between the screaming, panda-eyed wackiness of Robert Smith, Bjork and the fragile loonery of Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips there are also shades of Grandaddy in the crackling firelight of the shamefully tender ‘Go Sadness’, Phil Spector in ‘There’s Nothing’ and Babybird’s finger-licking mid-90s pop anthem ‘Goodnight’ in the hyperpop mayhem of ‘Shut Your Eyes’. Where did they get the title from? The sleeve image shows a drawing of two wolves howling at the top of their lungs sketched by band vocalist, Adam Olenius. ‘Gaff Gaff’ is Russian for ‘Woof Woof’. Makes no sense at all? Well that’s the point. It’s silly but it sounds good and sparkles with the same kind of wordplay and tomfoolery as the record that it illustrates. You might not recognise it at first, but it’s in a language everyone can understand.
‘Howl Howl Gaf Gaff’ is a uncomplicated delight from start to finish. Put another way, if I could transfer the kind of joy it makes me feel in my head to my underpants, I’d be a very satisfied man indeed. Get a copy now….