a-ha - Ending On A High Note - The Final Concert (Live At Oslo Spektrum December 4th, 2010) mp3 album

Norwegian band a-ha missed a huge opportunity in doing a live album to reflect a last concert. As they recorded one single live show, many shortcomings can turn around as a deal breaker for those who really appreciate a well done live album. Instead of recording live shows excerpts throughout the tour in that year and select the best performed songs to be compiled on a consistent live album (like Kraftwerk did with "Minimum-Maximum" - althought that didn't grant all tracks being played well), we get Morten here not in his full shape, sometimes even unable to reach peak notes because of voice fatigue. It is also noticeable that some syllables in english are not accurately sung as he could easily do away with in the albums. Could it be because now he is settled in his homeland instead of living abroad? Perhaps. Notice the word "come" from track Foot Of The Mountain: "...we could stay there and never cOme back...". That vowel certainly doesn't sound like that. And it doesn't stop there. Accent is coming up strong on several words.The music is well played but not without flaws. A guitar misplayed note in "The Blood That Moves The Body" and musical improvisation on a couple of tracks, being "Analogue" an example of the band trying to end the song.The most irritating thing in this compilation is the band's obsession with Scoundrel Days tracks. The deluxe edition gets 6 full songs played, while in standard edition, gets 5. Half or more than half of Scoundrel Days is played live, while no attention is given to "East Of The Sun...", "Memorial Beach", "Lifelines", "Analogue" and "Foot Of The Mountain" albums, apart from playing one song from each of those albums in the full deluxe edition and representations of "Memorial Beach", "East Of The Sun" and single "Butterfly..." are completely left out from standard CD edition. Makes me wonder who was really in charge for a-ha, with the Scoundrel playing spree. The song "Bandstand", although played, was completely left out of the compilation, fact that if you see the respective performance video on YouTube, you will notice Morten's audio missing the chorus and not being able to properly sing - at least the technical problem has been justified.The entire audio could be better mastered, you will notice lack of bass where it could have more punchier sound. On top of that, for a final concert, why not hire more musicians? The show lacks musicians so the songs have few instruments and the result is a thin layered sounding live record. Royal Albert Hall concert in London, that same year, an entire orchestra gave the introduction to "The Sun Always Shines On TV". I confess that I like the Oslo intro much better, because it's different and electronic-wise, but the former way is just an example of how they could have had key players on the right time in a concert like that. A glorious ending should not be summarized in a straight concert like "Ending on a High note".

Just an opinion but surely a true 'Deluxe Edition' would have seen the Blu-ray disc being given the nod over a DVD version? Odd.