By Dean Wolfe, Prog dog Media |
A-ha must have felt the pressure on this release, their sophomore album. I was one of their new teenage fans eager to hear more from this band after a year-long wait back in 1986.
I bought the cassette and was pleasantly surprised. When you only have 1 album from a band, your perceptions can get plasticized- making it hard to imagine new music outside the limits if their first album.
Scoundrel Days is a very cool song. They know how to create goosebump-inducing intros. Singer Morten wastes no time and starts soaring right away into the first chorus- a sonic equivalent of a young mare running at full speed jubilantly across a wide expanse. The only single odd element of the song to me was when he made a kind of yodel. Is this a Norwegian or European thing? Is it just me?
I've Been Losing You is a real refresher. A-ha may be synth pop but they kind of go all out with a very live-sounding drum kit, as opposed to the one that's in a metal box with buttons on it. A super-solid chorus paired with a gratifying straight-ahead 'real' bass-line rock beat.
Still, the drum machine was not abandoned on this album. It's very much alive on tracks like The Swing of Things. Morten almost sounds like David Sylvian in Japan in one part- a nod towards his influence perhaps.
They prove you can still rock out with a drum machine and distortion guitars on Manhattan Skyline which is a deceptive little track. You think it's a ballad and then the chorus gets downright crunchy and messy. It's amazingly well pulled off, a juxtaposition of contrast.
This album isn't without a couple of clunkers like October which has some cool found-sound recordings but feels like a failed A-ha attempt at Sting's 'An Englishman in New York'. Also, despite having a good chorus, there's the deplorable Maybe Maybe which is an odd-man-out song. It comes off like a silly children's song (which I suppose is not disappointing for the youngest A-ha fans?).
A lot of the tracks could be characterized as fun, but not necessarily lacking depth or passion- like The Weight of the World, Manhattan Skyline or Soft Rains of April which evokes a strong sense of atmosphere and a rain-soaked Blade Runner world perhaps.
Tunes like Cry Wolf make for an irresistible dance track, but not much else (Nothing wrong with that, though).
PROG DOG SCORE: 3 / 5 out of 5 bones. Not a classic, but a fine collection of songs -a decent sophomore followup to their debut with some very special highlights.
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