“What a voice. What a talent.”

by Sabine Clement

Tuesday, May 8, 2012. A year and a half have passed since a-ha pulled out the plug and the three bandmembers went their individual ways. But, as was announced during that fantastic last gig in Oslo, all three of them keep making music, and so their ways might cross with those of old and new audiences again.

Tonight sees one of those first meetings. Morten Harket, the voice of a-ha, has embarked on a solo tour, which took him from Russia to Germany and now Belgium. At the concerts, he presents songs both from his own repertoire as well as from a-ha’s back catalogue. This gives him a wide range of work to choose from: next to a-ha’s nine studio albums, Harket can boast no less than five solo releases as well, including his latest “Out Of My Hands” (2012, Island Records).

As shops and offices in the city centre close for the night, an impressive queue of people is building in front of Brussels’ live venue AB. Not surprisingly, most of the folks out here are a-ha fans, and proudly sport their t-shirts and banners that declare them so.

Still, not everyone is familiar with the band’s complete works, nor with the singer’s solo career. I meet up with Lien, who only knows a-ha “back from the eighties” and had no idea they ever even continued (let alone how!) after “Take On Me” and “Hunting High And Low”.

“Ooh, childhood sentiments!” Lien had exclaimed, when I had asked her if she was interested in joining me to tonight’s performance. And after a moment’s contemplation, she had added “Sure, why not?”, willing to give this a try. Her own taste in music leans to the somewhat heavier side, with Faithless as one clear example, but also Snow Patrol or Elbow.

She’s not the only one who’s here to experience something new. Olivier, a long-term a-ha fan, declares that he’s attending tonight’s show “out of curiosity”. He’s seen and heard all of a-ha and now naturally wants to see how Morten Harket fares on his own, and if the singer’s musical offerings still cater to Olivier’s taste.

Other people are already more certain of the outcome of their appreciation of the performance. “It may be a little strange without Paul and Magne, but we’re mostly Morten fans anyway,” Bernadette and her friends claim. Their gifts of roses and a heart-shaped box filled with Belgian chocolates underline their words.

7pm sharp. Everyone inside tenses up. “It’s best to stand to the side,” the guy who hands out the venue’s calendar leaflets warns me. Two tall security guards loom over the entrance gates, a third one moves towards the door. The girls at ticket control laugh nervously and grab their scanners a little tighter.

Then, the doors open and the first batch of people almost tumbles inside. There is the familiar rush to the ticket control; flags, flower bouquets and thoughtfully wrapped gifts flash by. Only water bottles and drink cans are confiscated. After the first two-three rows in front of the stage are filled, the pace slows down a little and the AB personnel visibly relax. Some fans already veer off to the Morten Harket merchandise shop or to the bar, but most concertgoers decide to postpone such visits until after the show and head straight to the main hall.

The AB is not sold out, but the hall still fills up nicely, leaving only the balconies empty. In the front row, a lot of different languages can be heard. French and Flemish, naturally, but there are also people from Holland, France, Germany, Italy and even a family from Russia! Anatoli, Yuliya and eleven-year old daughter Ulya have seen Morten’s concerts in Moscow and Berlin, and now they are here in Brussels. So, what did they think of those two previous gigs?

“Morten’s singing was fantastic, but I think tonight’s atmosphere is going to be better. In Moscow, the tickets were rather expensive, so the hall was not very full and then it is not so easy to get into it,” Anatoli explains.

The audience is indeed buzzing with excitement. Everyone eagle-eyes the happenings on stage and in the aisles.

Behind the stage, we see a simple white linewand, which replaces the tall curtain from the previous shows as a backdrop for the lightshow. On the left, Karl Oluf Wennerberg’s drumset is gleaming in the spotlights, and a little further, at center back, Erik Ljungren’s keyboard stand resides. Next to that one, there’s Morten’s black acoustic guitar, gifted by The Everly Brothers, together with a pile of towels and a few water bottles.

Meanwhile, everything is set up for folk band Songdog, the collective around singer/songwriter (and award-winning playwright) Lyndon Morgans.

Do they know how they got asked to be the opening act, I ask violin player Jasper Salmon. “I have no idea,” he smiles. “Lyndon and Karl [Woodward, harmonica/banjo] used to be in another band before, named Sad Among Strangers, and they toured with a-ha, back in the eighties. So there is a connection of sorts, although I do not know if it that is the reason why we’re here now.”

Songdog delivers a 45 minute set, which is of striking melancholic and evocative beauty, underlined with a raw voice that tells of memories, religion and lust. Not everyone catches on with the music or the lyric, but many people in the audience seem to be truly listening. “The view is not great, but I do like the sound,” a German woman says, and her friends agree.

Immediately after Songdog’s performance, stagehands and roadies appear. Cables get connected, monitors are moved around, the famed Everly Brothers guitar is tuned. The second waiting begins, and this time, people know it’s “for real”. Occasional shouting breaks out and demands for “Morten! Morten!” are heard.

Finally, the lights dim anew. Cheering follows instantly. A heavy drone fills the hall, smoke gets blown on stage and the purple spotlights jump in. On walks Morten, a broad smile on his face. The right hand comes up in greeting, then veers down and perches the aviator sunglasses firmly on the nose. We have lift-off.

With its catchy rhythm, “Burn Money Burn” immediately grabs the audience by the lapels and it won’t let go for the rest of the night. “I’m The One” and “Keep The Sun Away”, both from the new album, follow in quick succession. Morten’s voice seems in good shape and this threesome of songs does a proper job as a vocal warming-up. There is, however, a lot of fiddling with both ear and belt monitor, and a fair amount of handsignalling towards the technician’s control desk.

Also the three backing musicians are getting their cues from Morten. It’s clear that he’s the main driver here, the director.

Apart from that, he has now taken up the task of in-between-song entertaining as well. Tonight shows Morten in a very relaxed and talkative mood, commenting on things he sees and hears in the crowd, and then even commenting his own comments, which results in quite a bit of laughter.

“Crying In The Rain” brings on a first selection of a-ha songs. When the characteristic sounds of rain and thunder are heard, there are shouts of recognition and appreciation. And once the song is finished, there’s even louder yelling, which makes Morten lose track of his next words.
“I keep forgetting!” he remarks.
Yelling.
“You still remembered this one?”
More yelling.
“Wraaaah,” he mock-yells back and opens his arms as if in despair, a smile on his face. “Well, we haven’t developed much, have we?”
Fortunately, the audience takes the playful evolutionary comment in stride and this time, there’s laughter instead of yelling.

At last, he remembers what he was going to say originally. When he announces that “we wanted to ask you guys if there was one a-ha song you’d like us to play,” everyone immediately starts shouting favorite a-ha titles. Morten realizes his error and starts to laugh, adding then that the polling had already been done in advance. “And you have chosen “Out Of Blue Comes Green”!”

Ah, what distinctive choosing powers we have! What follows is a beautiful rendition of the fragile, yet powerful song, with Morten perfectly hitting all the difficult notes.

Lien is impressed. “It is and remains a beautiful voice,” she admits. “Both a beautiful singing voice and a very sympathetic speaking voice. Fantastic in every aspect. What a talent.”

She’s a little less certain about how the different instruments are coming together. “They seem to be slightly off at times,” she wonders. A little mechanical, too. There are quite a lot of synth sounds in the mix and sometimes they feel overpowering. Fortunately, drummer Karl Oluf Wennerberg lends a strong arm to many songs and guitarist Dan Sunhordvik picks his moments of glory quite well.

“Move To Memphis and “Forever Not Yours” conclude the first selection of a-ha songs.

“It’s strange to notice how many of their songs I actually know,” Lien remarks. Maybe a-ha makes up a bigger part of our collective memory than many realize.

And tonight, it’s during the performance of those a-ha songs that it’s impossible not to be reminded of Paul and Magne. Many of the keyboard sounds seem to be plucked directly from Magne’s “database of assorted sounds, 1984-2010”, whereas the long guitar wails in mid-song of “Crying In The Rain” carry Paul’s signature all over. But then, during the long musical outro, Dan veers off the path and adds a lot of noise to the slides, effectively bringing new and known together. This is a-ha but not quite a-ha.

Morten straps on his own guitar for the songs that he (co-)wrote, like “When I Reached The Moon”, “Los Angeles” and “A Kind Of Christmas Card”. Often enough, though, he simply holds it without playing. There’s too much fiddling with all the things and devices plugged into him to make playing feasable. Occasionally, you can see how his fingers form a chord or how they are ready to strike, then they quickly move off to turn a wheel or touch his ear instead.

“A Kind Of Christmas Card” seems like a difficult one in any case, with Morten reaching toward his troath or thumping on his chest. But the singing stays on key. The only time the vocal goes noticeably wrong is during “Spanish Steps”, where the ending is suddenly all over the place.

Judging from the crowd’s response, the highlight of the evening is “We’re Looking For The Whales”. Morten announces the song with explaining how this was the song that made a-ha a band.

“In those very early days, you’re not really there unless you make a song and something happens. So, we were making demos and, well, nothing happened.”
Laughter.
“But then we did this one, and it happened. And it’s not “Take On Me”.”

And off they go, and they give the song so much energy – Karl is battering like crazy, Erik has the whales singing, Dan is using all of the stage and Morten grabs a tambourine and joins in the rhythm. The audience is on a high, dancing and clapping, and they will keep it up until deep into the next song’s intro.

That next song is “Just Believe It”, and its complicated nature seems to bewilder the audience. A repetitive keyboard pling sounds almost ominous in the night and quickly turns the joyful atmosphere its predecessor had brought. Perhaps not the most logical order of songs, unless you wish to keep the audience on its toes.

In between songs, Morten keeps changing his glasses for his sunglasses and back again – so often, that Lien thinks she’s discerning a pattern.

“I’d say he wears the shades during his own songs, and his glasses during a-ha’s,” she reckons. “You think there’s any hidden meaning in that?”
I cannot help but laugh.

“Lightning” concludes the first part of the set, but Morten returns for two more encores. And then, at long last, Morten himself seems to have had enough of the fidgeting and takes out the earplugs. “I don’t want to hear myself, as strange as that may sound!” he claims. People respond in disbelief. “Oh, you have no idea,” he smiles and launches into “Lay Me Down Tonight”.

Finally, it’s time for “that one strange, corny song, which has gotten to my legs. Or not just my legs, it’s in my spine as well… Here’s “Take On Me”.”

For the last time, Morten, backing musicians and crowd bundle forges and together, we dance and sing the night out. A thank you, a flag, a bouquet, a wave, they’re gone.

The background music is turned on again. Everyone moves out of the hall and into the foyer. The bar attracts some attention, the merchandise shop a lot more. All around, I see clusters of people talking, smiling, reminiscing.

“I liked that it sounded heavier,” Olivier says, “with the guitar and the drums. This is a concert to remember.”

“It was great,” Adry comments. “Sure, I missed Paul’s rocking and Magne’s playful touch, but Morten sounded fantastic. And man, has he turned into the entertainer or what?”

The verdict seems to be pretty unanimous. No matter how people feel about a-ha or about Morten’s solo work, this was a top notch performance by “the voice of a-ha”. The AB is renowned for its deep, rich sound, and Morten used the venue’s acoustics to his – and their – full advantage. He sang beautifully, no way around it. The atmosphere was superb, the night a success.

So what are Lien’s concluding thoughts?

“Morten’s own material is a little too soft for my ears, but to me, he appears to be a true artist, who wishes to put more into his songs than just turning them into sales successes. He doesn’t want to sell only because of his good looks. I thought the screaming in between was kind of funny, but I wonder if he’s not completely tired of it. It seems to me that he wishes to get recognition for his work instead.”

She turns quiet and keeps musing over everything that she’s just seen and experienced. Once we’re outside, she continues.

“You can see that he’s taking pride in his performance. As a spectator, I was annoyed by all his fiddling and signalling, as it diverts from the performance. But then, it’s also a sign that he takes pride in his work. He wants to deliver quality, and so he’s telling the people around him how to help him achieve that.”

“You know,” she adds pensively, “I really feel like listening to more of a-ha, now.”

And tonight that is, I assume, the most beautiful tribute Morten could have made to the legacy of his former band.

Text and pictures (c) Sabine Clement