Should have ended several times, but A-HA still exist. What started as a Norwegian teen sensation in the mid-eighties has developed into a solid bank for melancholic sophisticated pop. What is up to the three people behind it: Morton Harket-so beautiful, so good in voice-, Pål Waaktaar, the nerdy genius, Magne Furuholmen, often underestimated co-composer. Listening to again reveals the diversity of the early work with its great moments in the shadow of the Hitsingles.
Essential
Hunting High and Low (1985)
When the debut appears, A-Ha has been around for three years-and Pål Waaktaar and Magne Furuholmen have already had a career at the Psych rock group Bridges. The ten songs do not come out of nowhere, but on petitesses such as “Love Is Reason” it becomes clear that this is an 80s papper with a teen target group. However, the core of the album consists of pop brilliance.
We don’t have to talk about “Take on Me”, about the title piece: It starts lovely, offers a “Dead-Can Dance Play Pop” for a wipe part and ends on the pomp Olympus. “The Blue Sky” and “Here I Stand and Face the Rain” are also excellent compositions, divine sung by Europe’s best pop vowelist from the 1980s: Morten Harket.
★★★★★
Scoundrel Days (1986)
The debut album with its hits makes A-Ha a stars, the band tours, is passed around, the label demands number two. Basically, this cannot work. But does it. Waaktaar and Furuholmen go into a tunnel, sometimes produce themselves. The lyrics of the title song are as dark as the texts by Ian Curtis, also remind of a melody and arrangement of Gothic and Wave.
The 80s synth pop is clear, but there is no light behind the facade. “The Swing of Things” or “The Weight of the Wind” confirm the level, “Soft Rains of April” can be imagined as a Cure piece. Significant: none of these songs will be a single. If you only know that, you miss a pop championship.
★★★★★
Minor Earth / Major Sky (2000)
When A-HA 2000 returned after a long break (the hoped-for US career takes focus), the timing fits in Europe. Robbie and Kylie rule, A-ha have in their luggage, which is required: a brilliant single. “Summer Moved on” brings Café-Del-Mar-Feeling together with radiohead melody and arena refrain, 2000 couldn’t be better. The beats have the typical Millennium groove, which continues well on the radio to this day. Above all, however, the melodies are right: hearing “Velvet” once, having it in your ear for days.
★★★★★
ALSO GOOD
Stay on these roads (1988)
What a-ha, unlike the competitor of Duran Duran, succeeds: a substantial transition from the synth pop of the middle to the pop rock of the late 1980s. The plate is terribly clean, with pseudo-muscular, digitally generated Hall-Snares and some annoying pseudo-radio effects.
But you can do the gigantic title piece, place your bond song “The Living Daylights” in the heart of the record, play with “Touchy!” And “you are the one” cheesy’n’charming 80s trash and give the jewel “Out of the Blue Comes Green” almost seven minutes.
★★★★
East of the Sun, West of the Moon (1990)
The eighties are around, in the photos the three pose in jeans, west and pirate shirts, Harket wears a headband that demands new decade for grounded outfits. Something changes also musically: Harket sings deeper, “Slender Frame” is a rock song with guitar duels and pig organ, “I call your name” designed for the US mainstream, including saxophone. “Crying in the Rain” is a cover of the Everly Brothers, the keyee is: “Since we’re not together/ i pray for stormy weather.”
★★★★ ½
Memorial Beach (1993)
The attempt to make A-ha in the United States even greater is crashed, and Memorial Beach has the songs for it. Above all, “Dark is the Night for All”, which sounds like U2, they would not have followed their zooropa vision. The terrible single “Move to Memphis” is too much to the target group, but in the course of the record a-ha find a good way to make their music sound more dusty than ever. And with the title piece they even succeed in bar jazz.
★★★★
Lifelines (2002)
The trio now shakes a radihite like “Forever Not Yours” out of its sleeves, classic pop rock, discreetly modernized and arranged in such a way that the melancholy note predominates: A-ha albums do not lead to the fact that you jump over euphoriaized through the area.
Lifelines swings in the melodic mid-tempo, Morten Harket tells all kinds of separation stories. Interesting how much “there’s a Reason for IT” sounds like Travis, A-Ha is also quite with yourself.
★★★★
MTV Unplugged: Summer Solstice (2017)
Midsummer, an island in Norway, A-ha play their songs in prayer format. This is not necessarily a good idea (analogue it showed it), but of course the band’s catalog is so huge that not much can go wrong. In the best moments, the band and the accompanying orchestra interpret the songs chamber music, Alison Moyet and Ian McCulloch from Echo & the Bunnymen are there, who sings along with “Scoundrel Days” and brought “The Killing Moon”. File under: pretty.
★★★★
IT’S GOING OK
Analogue (2005)
The one A-ha plate that is not on the streaming portals. The title speaks volumes, analogue largely dispenses with synthes and effects, the band relies on craft: electric guitar, piano, drums. The songs are great, the problem is that a-ha only play two varieties in this setting: ballads (always nice) and arena-like Britpop anthems (always the same).
Instead of your compositional skills, you build on loud-quiet dynamics here. Analogue should sound like a hard work, but it looks a bit lazy in creative terms and therefore not very convincing. The best thing is: “Cozy Prisons”, which Chris Martin looks at with envy.
★★★
HANDS OFF
Foot of the Mountain (2009)
The album is not unpopular among the fans, the warning “finger gone” is an exaggeration, but you really have to hear Foot of the Mountain if you already know everything else. The hit is the title track-and a rip-off of the Danish band Mew. The other songs have a digital coating that robs them of the air; “Riding the Crest”, for example, is supposed to repeat the twang of the 80s hits, but the idea of combining nostalgia and contemporary pop leads to nothing.
★★
Offset
Before Pål Waaktaar and Magne Furuholmen found the right singer with Morten Harket, they played in the band Bridges psychedelic rock, not far from the Swedish band. The LP Fakkeltog (★★★★) is great, the compilation Vakenstatt is also available. Morten Harket used the band break in the nineties for his ambitious solo leader (★★★★★), where, in addition to expected pop, he also offers poems and a touching cover version of the final 10CC song “Ready to Go Home”.
Pål Waaktaar plays with his wife Lauren Savoy under their surname and as part of the Duos Weathervane; Together with the daughter of his bandmate there, he wrote songs for the Waaktaar & Zoe-Album World of Trouble (★★★★), a great indiepop plate with small hits like “Tefful Girl” in 2017. Magne Furuholmen started his solo career after a few collaboration plates until the mid-2000s, the album a dot of black in the blue of your bliss (★★★★) from 2008 is his strength and sounds how Chris Martin imagines his first solo work.