There's a fine tradition in British pop whereby a disparate gang of session musicians cook up a hit in the studio and a band is knocked up specifically to promote it. The early seventies were a particularly fertile period for this with one man hit machine vocalist Tony Burrows fronting up White Plains, Edison Lighthouse, The Pipkins and an early incarnation of The Brotherhood Of Man. Unit 4+2, a band with a revolving door of members, were as good an example of such jerry building as any. In its marrying of a lyric of apocalyptic destruction with a summery bossa nova rhythm, 'Concrete And Clay' really shouldn't work as well as it does, but there's an uplifting joy in the faith in love that the song celebrates. "But love will never die, because we'll see the mountains tumble before we say goodbye"; such hubris can turn tail and bite hard when things go pear shaped (as many recent number ones have testified), but what the hell - for as long as the song lasts then it's all good and because of that, 'Concrete And Clay' is a very hard song to dislike.
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