Traditional Pop takes a glance again at a-ha’s darkish sophomore LP, Scoundrel Days, and uncover an album extra Smashing Pumpkins than Smash Hits

Simply how on earth do you comply with up that music? With the troublesome second album, Norway’s best, a-ha, returned with a a lot darker file in Scoundrel Days – a melodramatic synth-operetta that exposed a extra complicated and intriguing group than their poster boys picture would recommend.

On the threat of stating the bleeding apparent, Take On Me is a severely good pop music. The truth is, it’s too good; so apparently easy, instantly accessible and simple on the ear that we are inclined to overlook fairly how subtle, intricate and well-crafted it’s.

NORWAY’S FINEST

It’s even easier to dismiss its immediately hummable hook as mere bubblegum fodder, when delivered by three easy-on-the-eye Nordic cherubs, barely out of their teenagers. It’s so inherently marketable, the cynical may suspect foul play. Solely once you cease to analyse its constituent components (and try to hit that word) does the penny lastly drop that you just’re coping with three heavyweight musos who’ve actually obtained their shit collectively. Significantly good pop certainly.

Evidently, it conquered the world by means of heavy MTV and radio rotation. The album from which it got here, 1985’s Searching Excessive And Low was equally ubiquitous, promoting by the bucketload and producing one other hit single, The Solar All the time Shines On TV. Whenever you’ve set the bar so excessive, the place do you go from there? That was the very actual drawback that a-ha had created for themselves. In fact, it’s an excellent drawback to have. They had been driving a wave of adulation; the place they took it subsequent was as much as them.

Learn extra: Making Searching Excessive & Low

In 1986, singer Morten Harket was interviewed for Australian TV in the course of the band’s first world tour (taking part in comparatively modest 2,000- to 4,000-capacity venues) off the again of that first file. Regardless of a packed schedule, the band had been one way or the other managing to squeeze in some studio time Down Below, trying to complete off the subsequent file.

Throughout the interview, Morten was requested the inevitable awkward query of how he felt about being ‘packaged’ – he responded in good spirits, gently emphasising it was the music that in the end mattered to them, the reference to the viewers, and the chemistry of the band.

DARKER TERRAIN

That first file cast their pop poster boys picture, which (for the informal observer, no less than) nonetheless defines them to at the present time. In actuality, as second album Scoundrel Days units out to show, it was an ill-fitting tag that by no means actually suited them within the first place. They didn’t attempt to escape the shadow of Take On Me by writing even greater pop songs. As an alternative, they ventured into darker terrain.

A primary hear of Scoundrel Days suggests it was designed to be a correction – a realignment that cleaned all you thought you knew about a-ha and reintroduced them as sophisti-pop connoisseurs.

BREAKING THE MOULD

Typically all through, Morten’s vocal stylings are paying homage to Simon Le Bon’s wealthy powerhouse supply, however not like Duran Duran’s projection of decadence, glamour and yachts within the Caribbean, a-ha’s imagery on Scoundrel Days fixates on topics starting from isolation and private terror to summary notions of looking for whales. Even the album’s title tasks the opposite picture of tough edges and seediness.

With its grandiose epic melodrama and verbose gothic lyricism, this model of a-ha is extra Smashing Pumpkins than Smash Hits. It’s tempting to attract some comparisons with their contemporaries Speak Speak, who initially had been marketed because the ‘subsequent Duran Duran’ by their file firm, earlier than breaking the mould to evolve into one thing extra complicated, pastoral and experimental.

A-ha are the textbook instance that it takes 10 years to develop into an in a single day success. The pre-fame rock band, Bridges (fashioned within the late 70s by teenage friends, Pål Waaktaar and Magne Furuholmen) was pivotal within the growth of their sound.

Learn extra: Prime 80s pop movies

Rising up on prog rock and psychedelic bands, their songcraft is as a lot indebted to Genesis and King Crimson because the synth-pop trappings they adopted of their very own period. When you perceive that, it’s straightforward to determine within the proggy tempo adjustments, surprising turns and summary thrives that abound on Scoundrel Days. See, for instance, a-ha’s basic trademark quick/sluggish pivot, as exhibited beforehand on Take On Me, which rears its head on a number of events.

SWEET EMOTION

The entire songs on Scoundrel Days had been written by Waaktaar and Furuholmen, with a number of composed solely by the previous. Certainly, a few of them started as both concepts or fully-fledged songs initially carried out by Bridges – a listing of riches to be mined.

Regardless of his contributions to a few tracks on the primary file, Morten Harket stepped again from the writing course of. His restricted involvement on this ingredient has remained pretty constant all through the band’s profession. But, whereas he not often pens the lyrics or melodies that he performs, Morten owns them completely, delivering his bandmates’ phrases with absolute conviction, eking out the emotion of every syllable. Although there are clear and frequent stylistic reference factors to his contemporaries, Harket’s vary is the ultimate and his persona key to a-ha’s distinctive character.

DIFFICULT SECOND ALBUM

The album was largely produced by Alan Turney, who’d been introduced in on Searching Excessive And Low to ship the hit singles. God is aware of what the file label should have thought, then, after they turned in Scoundrel Days, as a result of there’s little right here that’s as rapid or immediately accessible.

Even on the singles, Scoundrel Days calls for extra of the listener. The solutions aren’t specified by a conveniently digestible format, as an alternative requiring repeated listens to unpick. All through, preparations are busy, typically densely layered in a barely muddy combine. Certain, there’s an costly sounding gloss, but it surely’s tempered by the numerous idiosyncratic twists a-ha take. Nothing is unintentional, it’s all very intentionally crafted. The lyrical selections, melodic or rhythmic turns, and infrequently abrasive moments are wilfully abstruse.

EPIC MELODRAMA

There’s loads of melodrama within the Tears For Fears mould, however really it’s a lot weirder, extra experimental and gothic than the Bathtub duo in some ways. In 2009, Magne advised Dermot O’Leary throughout an interview with BBC Radio 2: “I really feel extra related to Depeche Mode” when in comparison with their different contemporaries. That analogy actually feels apt for a lot of Scoundrel Days, significantly when Morten delivers bleak couplets in a wealthy baritone over icy synths.

However it’s not all weighty, impending doom. A-ha’s ‘epic melancholia’ (as Mags describes it) has at all times traversed that skinny line between ache and euphoria – or “Dancing with tears in my eyes” as one other modern may need put it.

Learn extra: A-ha album by album information

There are lighter moments, even these approaching whimsy, like Possibly, Possibly, which may nearly move for Syd Barrett in case you strained your ear. And Cry Wolf, its menacing folktale inspiration apart, is as downright funky as something Prince contributed to the dancefloor within the mid-80s. At varied factors, the album is danceable, uplifting and a hell of a number of enjoyable.

Waaktaar’s guitar hero ambitions are dropped at the fore extra explicitly, with thrilling outcomes. Whereas it’s nonetheless basically a synth-pop file at coronary heart (full with all its stylistic trappings), a-ha are increasing the palette with sometimes abrasive guitars (see Manhattan Skyline) and fairly frankly ridiculous drumming from session extraordinaire, Mike Sturgis. Throughout these overblown fills on I’ve Been Dropping You, you half anticipate the drummer to spontaneously combust in a Spinal Faucet-esque puff of smoke. Clearly, they’re having enjoyable with it, delivering the pomp with a raised eyebrow.

FAN FAVORITES

Scoundrel Days is a tough one to put at occasions. Critics may argue the songs are barely stilted by the sturdy and brittle mid-80s manufacturing therapy. On file, it’s close to inconceivable to separate the core of every monitor from its muscular stylistic trappings. Nonetheless, watching the identical songs carried out stay at a 1994 enviornment present in South Africa, it’s a very completely different beat – free, uncooked, rocky, and well-worn in like your favorite pair of outdated denims. By now you’re witnessing a well-oiled stay unit that’s assured sufficient in its tightness to play it free. Each variations have their deserves, however the truth that the songs have advanced into enduring and anthemic fan favourites is testomony to their energy.

POP’S ROCKERS

Since that first meteoric rise, a-ha have remained underdogs of types. Rock royalty of their native Norway and quietly promoting out colossal venues all over the world, if by no means fairly matching these heights within the UK and US mainstream. However time has served them nicely, with ongoing props from transatlantic rock A-listers like Coldplay and Weezer additional cementing their standing inside that league. Regardless of the makes an attempt of Scoundrel Days, they’ll by no means shake the clutches of Take On Me.

Some 35 years after conquering MTV, Take On Me conquered its successor platform, YouTube. In 2020, it turned considered one of a choose few to succeed in the one billion views mark (since then, that determine has almost doubled).

RICH REWARDS

Scoundrel Days is a-ha’s ‘troublesome second album’. However don’t confuse that for a scarcity of ambition or working out of steam. Quite the opposite, it was deliberately engineered that approach; a deliberate altering in fact that didn’t thwart their legacy, however merely rebuilt it in their very own design. It was no industrial flop, happening to shift greater than six million copies worldwide and counting. In fact, it’s not a drastic departure from the sound that made them bed room pin-ups, but it surely asserted inventive ambitions far past the two-dimensional picture that had been bestowed upon them.

Scoundrel Days is a more durable nut to crack, but it surely’s greater than price persevering for the wealthy rewards it comprises inside.

THE SONGS

Scoundrel Days

“Was that any individual screaming?” It’s a daring opening line over an eerie arpeggiated synth line – a mix that reeks of early Human League, significantly within the Philip Oakey vocal stylings, with somewhat Depeche Mode thrown in.

The title monitor is gothic, cinematic and dramatic. We are able to solely assume the summary opening minute is meant to filter out informal followers earlier than it hits that hovering refrain we’ve come to know a-ha for.

Right here on in, it’s obtained the powerhouse drama of Duran Duran, although far more menacing than many followers would anticipate, with the darkness of The Remedy or Echo And The Bunnymen. Reside strings within the ultimate third give a cinematic really feel that hints maybe of their later Bond theme.

The Swing Of Issues

It opens with jingly bell synths that recall Depeche as soon as once more, a cool bass sound and electro tom-tom drum fills, adopted by a jittery beat, earlier than dropping into half-time for the refrain (oh so very a-ha!).

Their affect on Coldplay may be very obvious within the epic singalong refrain. The synth sounds are unbelievable, and so fully of their time, with the baritone vocals. Very lyrical, and once more, it’s an epic, melodramatic sound.

Over the course of four-plus minutes, The Swing Of Issues morphs by means of no less than seven completely different genres – continually switching the rhythm or temper as quickly as you’re feeling you could have a deal with on it. Finally, it rises right into a driving rock music, because of propulsive drums that wouldn’t be misplaced on a Bruce Springsteen drivetime anthem like Born To Run.

I’ve Been Dropping You

The primary single of the file. A lighter mid-tempo, but upbeat, monitor, with extra frenetic drums from Michael Sturgis (hear out for that completely ridiculous drum fill after a break just below 4 minutes in) and a cool bassline.

On first hear, it’s not an instantly apparent selection for a single, however then that’s simply indicative of the darker sound that characterises the album. On repeated listens, it reveals itself to be an anthem of epic proportions.

Once more, it’s obtained all of the strut and swagger of Duran Duran dancing on the sand. The stay drums add muscle and grit to the sound. The music’s genesis apparently started from a monitor from Waaktaar and Furuholmen’s earlier pre-a-ha group, Bridges.

October

A complete change of tempo right here, opening with an atmospheric intro with a barely incongruous mix of discovered sounds: ocean waves lapping in opposition to the shore, mangled church bells, footsteps and extra otherworldly sonics.

From right here, it then breaks into elevator muzak, lounge bossa nova with an 808 drum sample, earlier than the whispered vocals inject a extra menacing high quality, at odds with the backing monitor, music corridor brass, and kooky whistling.

Mixed with the vaguely mockney vocal styling it comes off as a precursor to Damon Albarn’s fairground journey interludes that punctuate Blur’s ‘Life’ trilogy a decade later. Wait a minute, did a-ha simply invent Britpop?

Manhattan Skyline

A chiming, glistening synth harpsichord sound waltzes alongside fantastically, as a refined and subdued Morten sings “wave goodbye” in a candy falsetto, earlier than a minute in, soiled grungy guitars and eerie synths arrive and shake up all preconceptions because the vocal turns right into a guttural primal growl. It is a-ha at their best possible, experimental and genuinely thrilling.

Cry Wolf

Opening with the suggestion of screaming crowds, over a spooky spoken phrase, earlier than a really funky synth bassline (with shades of Thriller) and one other frenetic drum half. One of many catchiest tracks, significantly with the falsetto “woo-ooh” chorus on the refrain after the “cry wolf”. This might nearly move for Speaking Heads on Talking In Tongues in its pure, angular white-boy funkiness and percussive stabs. One of some tracks to construct round a groove relatively than a chord development.

We’re Trying For The Whales

After a chugging, atmospheric synth introduction, a sluggish beat then skips to double time (the recurring a-ha trademark). With its upbeat main key development, it’s considered one of most straight up pop-sounding tracks on the album… but in addition not, with its summary lyrical content material.

The Weight Of The Wind

One other characteristically 80s intro with snappy keyboards and busy programmed drums, main right into a dramatic hovering, nearly operatic vocal from Morten replete with heavy lyrical imagery. There’s a very whizzy synth solo two minutes in. This model of pompous bluster would later be replicated by The Killers to nice impact.

Possibly, Possibly

All of the sudden, the temper is switched completely, with a really mild and bouncy Paul McCartney vibe The lyrics right here appear dangerously near the basic Morrissey line (coincidentally or not) launched in the identical yr: “Possibly, you had been solely joking once you mentioned that you just had been strolling out on me.” OK, nicely maybe that’s not fairly as unhealthy as being bludgeoned in your mattress, Morten.

Vocally, it’s tinged with somewhat Roy Orbison vibrato, additional enhancing the Mozza impact. It was launched as a single – although apparently solely in Bolivia, and precisely what enamoured it to that territory can be fascinating to know. It’s a enjoyable, good-time catchy melody.

With its plodding, nearly ska-lite rhythm, it’s comparatively throwaway in comparison with the extra dramatic moments elsewhere, however a needed change and one of the vital accessible songs on the file. A frantically busy synth interlude takes it someplace completely different.

Comfortable Rains Of April

A dramatic opening, with synth pads and arpeggiating electronica, later joined by synthesized harp sounds and eerie keyboards. This album, and certainly this music particularly, highlights how real-deal musos a-ha really had been.

It’s actually fairly proggy. Following the sooner vocals, that are caked in reverb, the final phrase of the music (and album), appropriately ‘over’, is dry, shut and up-front, ending the file with a sudden, unusual feeling of claustrophobic intimacy. This monitor was one other lower lifted from Mags’ and Pål’s Bridges days.

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