Original Article By H†kon Moslet - (Translation by Sabine Clement) a-ha's first album in seven years has some good songs, but as a whole, it is a major disappointment. PARIS (Dagbladet): There is something lacking in character, when it comes to 'Minor Earth, Major Sky'. A feeling of missing motivation and inspiration hovers over an album where the cleverness has nothing to hunger for and the whole lacks dynamic. a-ha would very much like to create their own musical agenda in 2000, instead they come across as a band which doesn't matter in today's music biz. Old fashioned 'Minor Earth, Major Sky' won't be in the shops before Monday, April 17, but yesterday morning, Dagbladet received a copy, on the occasion of a-ha's European launch in Paris. My first impression from Thursday's pre-hearing - an anonymous and old fashioned album - has only been confirmed. The biggest blunder here seems to be the involvement of the German dance producer Boogieman. The man who should have brought a-ha into a new era, has given the band a sound which is so old fashioned and so outmodishly bombastic, that our boys can as well forget about a new career in the old and prestiguous English and American markets. a-ha is timeless, but Boogieman makes them untrendy, with his cheap beats and his pompous sound. He works with multiple synth layers and more or less outdated electronical instruments, without having a basic understanding of a-ha's purity or the floating melodic qualities of Morten Harket's voice. The cover version of Savoy's four your old hit 'Velvet' is an example of how Boogieman, in an attempt to be smart, manages to botch the song's so charming atmosphere. This guy doesn't succeed at all in fulfilling a-ha's 2000 wish to sound both organic and electronic. Instead of taking the best of both worlds, one ends up with a nor fish, nor flesh situation. Unfinished But there is also an unfinished feel about the songs on 'Minor Earth, Major Sky'. Whereas last year's Savoy album 'Mountains Of Time' proved that Paul Waaktaar-Savoy at his best is a songwriter of Lennon-esque proportions, one now wonders whether it was haste or lack of interest which makes the material here so uneven in quality. A handful of songs are pleasing The delightfully swaying and intense single 'Summer Moved On, the energetic and catchy 'The Sun Never Shone That Day, which doesn't let itself break down under a dull production, the warm and evasively melancholic 'You'll Never Get Over Me', the Savoyish 'Mary Ellen Makes The Moment Count' with its delicate and organic lightness, and none the least Magne Furuholmen's 'I wish I Cared'. 'Cared' is Kirkelig Kulturverksted meats The Verve, in a song which takes after Mr. Mister's 'Kyrie'. It has hit potential, is majestic, sacral, festive and brings a Harket who sings absolutely heavenly. Dull The rest of the album is dull, poor in hit potential and boringly long. The worst song is 'Company Man', where a-ha combines a eurotrash version of the Beach Boys with German copacabana dance in a Norwegian Eurosong-setting. 'Little Black Heart' and Harket's 'To Let You Win' are shapeless, static songs, who should have thrown off an album which isn't worth its 58 minutes. I so much wanted to have reached an other conclusion, but an a-ha going idle is not what the world in the year 2000 is longing for.