a-ha Album: “Stay on These Roads”

a-ha's third album, and their last synth-pop venture, is a complete success! Their maturing sound, which becomes evident on their next album, peeks through a bit here and delivers wonderfully. Too bad a lot of people missed out on it. Highly recommended!!!

This is the only effort by the Scandinavian crew that I came away from with a bad taste in my mouth. The album has the feel of a collection of earlier songs that were passed up for publication. This is the type of half hearted effort that comes about when a group or artist feels pressured to release a new album. The only bright spots are "Hurry Home" and "Stay On These Roads". Not enough . Bring on the raspberry jam guys.

One of my three favorite a-ha CD's! The other two are "Hunting High and Low" & "Scoundrel Days." At any rate, the up-tempo highlight of this CD is the James Bond theme, "The Living Daylights". I was so disappointed that the film makers used a different rendition of this song for the movie - the one on the CD is a MUCH better version, hands down! The two slow songs, "This Alone is Love" and "There's Never a Forever Thing" are absolutely beautiful, in my opinion - wonderful vocal range for Morten Harket. The rest of the songs don't shine as much as these three, but they are all wonderful.

I have all the a-ha CD's and while their newer music includes some wonderful songs, the older CD's, as a whole, hold more interest for me - maybe it's because they make me feel nostalgic and take me back to the end of my high school days. Who knows, but one thing's certain: a-ha's music is a refreshing breath of fresh air in these times of spoiled teenage pop divas who only shake their "assets" and haven't a lick of musical talent, and profanity-laced, roaring guitar rock (not that I don't like some of that stuff, but whenever I want to chill and get a little musical perspective, a-ha ends up in my player).

The album Stay on these Roads show a determined and ever changing facets of a-ha. Once again they prove that they are capable of more than just a ditty pop group. Our world is ever changing as is our music. It is nice to see that a band like a-ha does not tend to stick to the same formula of writing just to stay number one. Stick with the hard work guys.

There are songs in the album I like to skip (You are the One and Touchy, too pop) but then again there are songs I want to listen to over and over (Stay on these Roads, Out of Blue Comes Green, These Alone is Love). Morten's voice as usual is very powerful and you wonder what else he cannot sing. Overall, the album is worth buying.