A review in the guardian of A-ha's concert at the Albert Hall by none other than Steve "Trigger Happy" Poole.
Poor Morten Harket. He is still as beautiful as ever, still makes them scream as
he moves around the stage in a kind of elegant slow-motion stagger, clad in a
crimson shirt and achingly tight beige jeans. He retains his unearthly, youthful
perfection, while a portrait in some Norwegian attic wrinkles and rots. Which
means that, after all these years, the cruel misfortune of having been
successful in the 1980s will still not be forgiven.
The stage is underlit in blue neon, and banks of screens pulse with abstract
computer graphics. The Albert Hall vibrates to a thunderous stamping and the
deafening cheers of happy thirtysomething women. And that?s just for the
drummer?s entrance. (Mind you, he is, as we later learn, a ?Scandinavian legend"
? perhaps the god Thor?) Then Harket, keyboardist Magne Furuholmen and guitarist
Paul Waktaar-Savoy find their spotlights and launch energetically into the title
track of last year?s excellent comeback album, Minor Earth, Major Sky.
Harket keeps fiddling with his earpiece, and the sound mix is flappingly
bass-heavy. But then, after a charming speech by Furuholmen about how happy they
are to be here, come the old hits. They still sound remarkably inventive, and in
many cases ahead of their time. Manhattan Skyline alternates soaring melodrama
with avant-garde rock figures to better effect than Radiohead?s Paranoid
Android. I?ve Been Losing You throbs with rocky swagger, and Harket caresses a
melismatic ending in his ageless, alien-pure falsetto. Stay on These Roads
becomes an aching piano-led torch song, while Hunting High and Low grows
inexorably into a massive rock symphony. Furuholmen gleefully stabs out the old
fat synth riffs while Waktaar-Savoy loses himself in guitar solos that are
unfortunately inaudible, as the slumbering incompetent at the sound desk never
turns him up in time.
a-ha?s recent material is gentler and more wistful, but the swooningly melodic
structures of songs such as Time & Again or Forever Not Yours (from new album
Lifelines) are hardly overshadowed by the classics. The band essay a Status Quo
backline dance, slip a reggae breakdown into Bond theme The Living Daylights,
and wig out in an extended ending to Take on Me, during which even Harket seems
delightedly surprised that he can still hit those stratospheric vocal highs.
They end with a majestic The Sun Always Shines on TV, by which time it is
obvious to any rational human that a-ha are some of the greatest unacknowledged
geniuses of pop?s last two decades.
Steven Poole
― Alan Trewartha, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
And I just bought LIfelines. shan't get to hear it until after glasto
at this rate (too busy at work and then packing). Is it any good then?
― Alan Trewartha, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
yet to get the album but am dying to do so. Listening to some local
rock DJ's yesterday afternoon bash the hell out of A-HA, saying "They
were one of the gayest bands to come out of the 80's, and they are
still gay." They kept asking what other songs they ever had. I wished
they said their phone number because I would have given them a proper
schooling on A-ha. Of course this is coming from two losers who
claimed that Metallica was the greatest band to ever come out of the 80's.
― Chris, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)