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A-HA |
Wembley Arena Saturday 12 October 2002 |
| We arrived just in time for A-ha to take to the stage with their latest single, sadly ignored here in the UK,
Forever Not Yours. Without a word this was followed by the title track from their superb comeback album
Major Earth/Minor Sky. Wow, what a show this promised to be.
I don't know if you have noticed but all Scandinavian musicians seem to be brilliant - must have something to do with perpetual darkness. The keyboard player, Magne Furuholmen, doubled on guitar for some track even playing the lead on a few. The guitarist, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, took over lead vocal duties on Sycamore Leaves. And Morten Harket, what a voice - saying that though the other two could easily give him a run for his money vocally. |
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During the two and a half hours of show-time they played something from every album with around 60% of the show taken up with new songs from either
Major Earth/Minor Sky or Lifelines. To my great pleasure the
Scoundrel Days album got quite an outing with
Manhattan Skyline - respectfully dedicated to victims of terrorist attacks,
The Swing of Things, I've been Losing
You and Scoundrel Days.
Other highlights of the show included Stay on These Roads, Crying in the Rain, Sun Always Shines on TV and The Living Daylights plus newer ones like Lifelines and Summer Moved On. If I had to choose one song of the evening then it would be Hunting High and Low. I have not been physically moved from seeing a song performed live since seeing Genesis do "In The Cage" in 1986. A little after leaving the stage for what we all thought was the final encore Mags returned to announce "We never thought we'd play Wembley again". He went on to say that they'd finished the set, however, they'd attempt to play one more: the somewhat down and unrehearsed Locusts from the patchy Memorial Beach. Still we didn't mind - the only song missing from tonight's performance was Velvet - great shame as it is a great song. |
All in all a top night out. Fantastic ! If your a lover of well played, melancholic pop then you can't go far wrong with
A-ha. As a starting point try 2000's Major Earth/ Minor
Sky - highly recomended.
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