Here It Is: Roxette - Speak To Me (Bassflow Edit)

The Bassflow radio edit of Speak To Me is very special. Already a standout from the Roxette reunion album Charm School (review found here), I felt overall that the album sounded rushed in terms of production. Speak To Me is an uplifting ballad that plays on the band's strength: haunting verses from Per and Marie's unmistakably thorny groans that sound more expressive than ever. This new remix gives it an extra sheen that really sparkles, creating something most acts 25 years down the line almost never achieve - a career defining moment. Just, wow! Well done Roxette.

Roxette - Charm School (2011)

If I ever wondered what a solo Per Gessle solo album sounded like, then Roxette's long-awaited new studio album Charm School gives me a 70/30 idea. Marie's youthful spunk that ejaculated everywhere on Hotblooded is more vericose veins these days, and one can't blame these pop-rock legends for simply acting their age. Worth the effort, these songs evoke soft nostalgia with the odd throbbing electro impulse just to prove that their hearts are still in it.

Rootsy opener Way Out isn't exactly 'rad' or up their with the car-crash charisma of Crush On You (from 1999's popcentric masterpeice Have A Nice Day), but is no less spirited. As per usual here on this record, Per is the main driver, but Marie spikes the chorus with delicious distaste - she's possibly thinking 'and just where do I feature here?'.

Catching a glimpse of honesty and plaintively stoic elegance, Marie's statuesque ballad comes up next. No One Makes It On Her Own is poignant and restraint, but emotionally crippling. Strings are metaphorical crutches for a narrator who has lost her footing and at something of a loose end. I'm in love with the way Marie laments "causing quite the commotion" with experience and distance. Suffered fools and the consequences glady, it must have been love or something. Those aching backing vocals, like those swooping doo-wopping 'whhooooooaaaahhh' ones from Soul Deep slowed down, are unmistakably Rox.

If I were being kind I would rave about its swanky Girls On Film riff, but She's Got Nothing On (But The Radio) is lacking too much Marie to recommend itself as their comeback single. The chorus has potential - the synth sounds drip like sweat beeds and its exhilirating final lap sounds wonderful once all the final layers are wrapped around Per's lead vocal. Roxette daring to sound under-produced? Things will never be the same again... It's already gone top 20 in my favourite country Germany, so I'm happy for them. Marie sings her judicious middle-8 like she's swallowing thistles and it's moments like these that makes a Roxette fan feel very content and not able to ask for more. A bluesy-80s cocktail that could do with a bit more rocket-fuel to just add that fizz missing in the first two thirds.

The lush emotionalism of Speak To Me is a haunting reminder of Roxette's bristling and seductive chemistry (you can guess whom brings what element). Per's morbid verses are concerned with "bitterness", "gracefullness" and "faithlessness" (etc), shadowed by chugging rock sounds and Marie's signiture moans, and that feminine treacle of hers is a neverending supply on the power-ballad chorus. This should be their chart-hitting UK comeback single - it's just great.

Marie's physical gifts have never tempter her to overdramatize and even calling a song Glad You Called is as unpretentious as it gets, addressing a nervous relationship problem (I'm guessing something a bit more high brow than chlamydia), sounding like one of those 'zany' Tourism acoustic numbers recorded in a telephone box. Far from boring, Marie's singing a diary entry if not the phonebook.

Only When I Dream sounds like one of those 'go to sleep' Crash! Boom! Bang! tracks crammed in right at the end. Marie joins in on the affliction during, you got it, the chorus. And not one to 'bore us' remember, Per overcomes his writer's block with Dream On - where does he come up with such a varied subject matter? Strummy yumminess, like a forgotten and brilliant Brit-Pop b-side.

The album's sole electricized 'stomper', Big Black Cadillac, is another Per-geared drive-thru of hooks flying left, right and centre. And thank God. Marie chips in Real Sugar style, and this could be a single. Choice lyric 'I know he missed my touch, I didn't miss him much' has real buying power from Fredriksson. This track is certainly the boldest stroke here. Single #3 if they drive the album that far.

Marie Fredriksson is a woman, people. Her very female version of Everybody Hurts is called In My Own Way. She's no fool, but "now I'm a woman" is just naff and endearingly so. Before Cher threatens to sue, After All is actually one of Per's perpetual hardons for wanting to be in the Beatles. He's done this better (June Afternoon), and this is fine and everything (chirpy even) but it's not what I want dominating Roxette's comeback splash. Strong, dignifiedB and earthy, Happy On The Outside doesn't hurt at all - poised production and fussy emotions reach elegant heights, with a gorgeous piano refrain.

Making grand demands sound low-key, gorgeous closer Sitting On Top of The World tinkles and wallows in a heavenly aroma of Marie's expressive vocals that make you well up, and production that is soft-focus, off-hand, serene and synthy. And I love it!

The songs mostly don't provoke Marie's signiture vocal attitude (at least for any sustained length beyond cut-throat middle-8s or chorus cackles in between a lead from Per), but standouts On Her Own, the gristly Speak To Me and Sitting build to high emotional climaxes. They cheer the fuck up on Big Black Cadillac and those greasey fucked-up chords on the slightly uncomfortably sleazey She's Got Nothing On. The floppy acoustic songs mostly sung by Per, which dominate this album, are not so much impressive as they are stellar. I prefer the pent-up punchiness of "gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta crush on you, uh hu" but will take my country-tinged Way Out and less-immediate fuel of Limosine where I can get them. The production that once knocked me out and made me see stars (the hi-NRG belter Stars, the Chic-meets-Duran Duran explosion of The Look, and the swooshy bittersweet aspirations of One Wish) has dissolved into grainier riffs, unhurried grooves and subtle remembrances. That's not to say that Roxette don't go for it - there is not one single dud, but my youthful cravings for the illusions of the remarkably wearable Dressed For Success, ice-cold foamy power-ballad fizz of I Could Never Give You Up and fresh-faced romance of Paint (we were promised a return to the sound of Look Sharp! remember) are put aside to enjoy softer sensations and the occaision fuzzy glow of 80s rock. The live CD is pretty essential - Marie begins to relax and sweetly marvels "oh my God". From it, Silver Blue steals the show.

Rating:
8/10

Roxette - She's Got Nothing On (But The Radio(

Roxette - She got nothing on (but the radio) from Mats Udd on Vimeo.

Not much to say ... it's not amazing is it? Recycling the same kind of sleazy riff as Girls On Film, this just isn't much of a Roxette track - in fact Marie hardly opens her gob until the subdued middle-8. Her vocal on the wooshy and wistful One Wish was awesome so we know she can do it, but I think the days of the chaffing-leather heat of Hotblooded have been bled dry. We shall see come the release of Charm School - as disappointed as I am by the first single, my excitement for the album has not diminished.

The Night Is So Pretty & So Young: The Return of Roxette

My first musical obsession Roxette are back next year with their new studio album Charm School due February 2011, preceded by a new single called She's Got Nothing On (But The Radio).

Roxette are one of the few bands I struggle to actually choose a favourite album from: 1991's Joryride quenches every possible thirst imaginable and represents the peak of their overproduced vigour and sheer over-the-speed-limit melodic untouchableness; 1989's Look Sharp! is almost disco and Marie's vocals have the power to heel (this is their LP with the strongest batch of album tracks); and both 1999's glossy Have A Nice Day and the fast delivery (who expected a new album after only 2 years?) of 2001's slightly more sombre Room Service got their sensibility and position just right, but neither ignored their fetish for eccentric adrenaline (Crush On You and You Make My Head Go Pop being prime examples). With anthems and tremorring power-ballads that shatter like glass, I can't wait for the promise of a return to their vintage sound - for me, their only wobbly moment was Crash! Boom! Bang! but even that had its moments (the cock-hungry Sleeping In My Car was a top ten near miss but nothing else had the same amount of fuel in the tank sadly). Anyway, perhaps expect a discogrpahy dissection over the next few weeks when I have more time beyond my studies.

Crush On You

Roxette Challenge Dannii To A Re-Release Off!

As a confused gay I have had a few phases of hetro-crushes in my younger years - obviously I just wanted to be these women ('obviously'), but my infatuation with peroxide punkstress Marie Fredrikkson was love at first sight. Her bleeding outpour of soulfully damaged ballads and punchy appetite for rock deliveries established a visceral attraction that remains undiminished. And so Roxette have re-released their studio albums with bonus tracks for good measure - obviously Dannii Minogue was making them feel bad with her recent deluxe edition release schedule.

The career-best Joyride album's first bonus track is the shy and mellow ballad The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye, wherein joyful strumming verses spiral into melancholic heaven. If you can't picture yourself skipping to this in a field, then you clearly have a knack for not getting carried away for tossed off ballads. 'You know you're not the only one who knows how to cry' and 'we're very much the same' and tender offerings we all crave to hear, and Marie's aching voice is the perfect instrument for such wistfully tear-blurred sentimental vulnerability.

Love Spins operates a similar feel to other tracklisted Per vocal led tracks, particularly the awesome Knockin' On Every Door, and so it is little wonder they slammed the shutters on this one. A faultlessly perfunctory track. Violins provide massaging comfort on the Marie-drenched ballad Seduce Me with the finger-snapping sass I love them for and has the singer on fine form, grunting 'hey you' with remarkable bravery for self-introduction as ever.

Look Sharp's sought-after scintilating glamour makes it my favourite Roxette album: Marie's wind-defying quiff survives the bullet-firing 'na-na-na-na-na-na' chorus she unforgettably delivers. Cry is bizarrely their best song - it could have been sung by any of the greats and yet criminally is an album track! The shimmering champagne-fizzing dance-ballad I Could Never Give You Up is the set's other lost single and should have been another American number 1. And so the first bonus track is The Voice, which utilizes I Could Never's thunderstorm drums and glistening synths. Picking up the pace is the demo One Is Such A Lonely Number, which sounds like a generic Gloria Estefan album track - no life can be injected to such lyrics as 'make the world go around' but Roxette fans are under no illusion. The next 1987 demo, Don't Believe In Accidents, is quite a harsh anti-abortion stance, but I am sure there is a reason they aborted this mistake (the music sounds like the theme to UK TV show Casualty at one point).

I am not too familiar with their debut album Pearls of Passion (great title as it is!), but Soul Deep has always been one of their best stompers, with the most usurping whooooaaah yeah's I have ever heard - it makes Duffy and her cronies look a bit desperate, demonstrating vividly that whatever direction they take seems effortless, as here they channel 60s doo-wop into gurning prowling. The dramatic So Far Away is stark and agonising, which might be too theatrical for its own good, but I happen to love it. And so bonus track 1 is the Tits And Ass Demo 1986 of Neverending Love - the single has never left much of an imprint on me, but their dynamic is being put in place, yet it is a tad twee for my thirst for their raddled-faced, earthquaking ballads and rock numbers. Equally polite, the TAAD of Secrets That She Keeps is an acoustic turn for Per's stubble-bristling vocals to rub you down like a nail file.

Room Service is a worth all their previous triumphs, it really is a solid and surprising album: the high voltage of You Make My Head Go Pop would make Shania Twain blush with envy, Marie's self-penned Little Girl is a standout amongst their best work, and the ballads are par excellence for their unassuming beauty. The rippling electro and thorny guitars on the bruised Entering Your Heart are divine, it's a majestic ballad and Marie sings so sweetly it is impossible not to feel as if you are about to melt into ice cream at the mercy of Michelle McManus. The piano-led love song The Weight of The World showcases another gristling Per lead, and, well there you go. Bla Bla Bla Bla Bla (You Broke My Heart) is on the money for its aliterated repition as it's such a b-b-b-b-b-side if ever I heard one, it plods with distinctly Roxette-the-Beatles-were-a-huge-inspiration-you-know-piano-thuds.

When I was 8 years old I had lost my first set of friends and so beyond school had no idea I should really have found replacements, and so at school I went away on camp without realizing I would need to share a dorm with some mates. Well fancy that, after an embarassing crying fit, behind the scenes figures of authority obviously arranged classmates to ask me. I'm drifting, but basically when away I wanted the intriguing Tourism album as it was my chosen 'reward' for going. I still remember getting a letter from my Mother whilst on location at this camp, reading that she had bought it for me. I still remember kneeling by the CD player in the livingroom like listening to Roxette was the only thing that I cared about. Who needs social development when you have music to absorb yourself in? I was always disappointed and confused by their arrangement of It Must Have Been love, by hey-ho - Fingertips was amazing, Marie's rise-and-fall 2nd verse, The Rain's stunning celtic cheese-fest was to die for ('I was raised the Northern way' always raises a smile) with it's chugging sense of drama and quivering kiss-clenching, and Silver Blue remains one of their finest ever ballads. Okay, so bonus-wise we have the single edit of Fingertips and a vocal-switch of Cinammon.

Have A Nice Day came out of nowhere in 1999 and it was remarkably up to the challenge of shifting units amongst Britney, Cher and Destiny's Child, but after the sultry orchestra of I Wish I Could Fly settled itself on the UK charts at #11, the record company rudely gave up. The startling head-spinning rush of Stars, with Marie's frostbite vocals going hell for leather in dancefloor pursuit, was simply head and shoulders their craziest track since Joyride - the chart climate was ripe for this track to impact itself, but whatever. Special mention goes to Marie's gunpoint vocals on the ceaselessly amazing Crush On You. It Hurts is the tear-dripping ballad bonus track, widely available for some time, with great 'come down' poise that Massive Attack would be proud to reel in Tracy Thorn for. Myth has a guitar riff that sounds like the sitcom Friends theme tune, a bar-rocker track with a tough vocal from Marie - 'I love your myth' is great fun, especially when you are listening to your idol singing it. Makin' Love Tou You isn't fully committed - they aren't about to go wrong, but it's too gentle to fully penetrate (unless they don't mind you drifting off whilst they 'perform'), and Marie's vocals are thin like how she sung most of the next album....

1994's Crash! Boom! Bang! album slightly disloged my obsession for the band. I loved Marie's cackling delivery on lead single Sleeping In My Car, but it was crammed full of atmospheric songs that ran short of fuel in my opinion. Some fantastic ghostly vocals were in place, but it was lacking something overall. The lush soundtrack single Almost Unreal is included - a UK top 10 and one of the few videos to feature some proper beauty shots of Marie (those black eyebrows always set her cheekbones off like no one's business). The wilting verses are so inviting before we are bitch-slapped by their trademark sensitivity - 'I love how you do the hocus pocus to me' is adorably clumsy and of course was meant for the song to feature on the Bette Midler starring film Hocus Pocus. The twee verses to Crazy About You are their stock-and-trade and we have another 'hello' quaking chorus - maybe Per goes speed-dating far too often as these welcoming greetings are starting to grate. The floaty ballad See Me drifts away nicely, much like Go To Sleep did on the original sequence (Enya eat your heart out).

Roxette are eternally poignant and never fail to charm with their obsession for personal hand-shaking lyrics. If they return for one last hurrah I for one cannot wait.

Verging On The Obscene

The breathtaking and exquisite union between Marie Fredriksson's succulently soulful yet punky vocals and the ready-to-burst songwriting/production voltage from Per Gessle is a thing of unmatched melting beauty and splendour. Roxette's deft knack for a hypnotic and heartwelting ballad or punchy duck-for-cover pop meteorite has sustained an unparalleled, undiminished 20 year career that has been nothing if not consistent. Such robust versatility became clear circa 1999 witrh their "comeback" album of sorts Have A Nice Day - a sure-fire return to form. "It's hard to tell his gender" was an obscene observation suggesting the Scandinavian pair hunt in pairs for gender-specific sexual partners. Marie's agonising dance diva capabilities were effortlessly flaunted to jaw-dropping effect with the luminous and galacial storm Stars - an unflinchingly committed performance so dazzling, daring and dramatic it is impossible not to imagine her belting this one out from an icicle fortress full of kidnapped children forced to sing along on the album version. The Almighty Radio Edit is the post-0800 call to child services and elevates the song into an unequivocal dance anthem. The Todd Terry Tee's Radio Mix of the first single I WIsh I Could Fly follows the haunting lead of Fredriksson's sublime sigh. Taking the bait, it decorates her poised and commanding vocal, cushioning it with chic, sharp and sleek house beats whilst keeping the original's overlapping strings that already fold over you in deadly seduction. This remix fades not quite abruptly, rather it bows out gracefully before one last vocal delectation finally vanishes with all trace.

Wish I Could Fly (Tees Radio Mix)
Wish I Could Fly (Radio - Fade Out Mix)
Wish I Could Fly (StoneBridge Club Mix)

Stars (Album Edit)
Stars (Almighty Radio Edit)