Truly charmed

So I was offered this amazing opportunity get a free copy of the new Roxette album Charm School Revisited, and all I have to do to get it is write a review.

My inner 16 yr old self took over and I immediately jumped at the chance, or I tried to, only to find out that someone else had beaten me to it. A very well respected journalist. You know the type, someone who writes for a living. I on the other hand have the sum total writing experience of one blog, written about cake. So I did the only thing a respectable mid 30-something professional woman can do. I begged! I'm sorry to say that it wasn't very pretty.

Only now I have to write a review, which I have no idea how to do, and it might have been more useful to google How to write a music review, when I was first handed the CD, not when I needed to write. It seems so obvious now in hind sight: Take notes while you are listening to the album.

No the first thing that I did was to avoid listening to the Album for two days. Why? Because 16 yr old inner me who still remembers going to see Roxette as my first concert experience was scared that I might not love the album, and would need to write a bad review. Luckily for me, I love the album and I don't have anything nasty to say about it. Even the song that I didn't like the first time I listened to it "Big Black Cadillac" has grown on me this last week, and i now happily sing along with it. Being singing impaired this has not made my husband a happy man, but he married me knowing who I am. So the review...

Some stuff that I think I'm meant to tell you about: The album comes with two CD's. The first being the main album with 12 songs and the bonus second CD contains the demo versions of all 12 songs plus three remixed songs. The cover itself is a three leaf card type, the two ends hold the two CD's and the centre holds a booklet containing song lyrics. Charm School was produced by Clarence Öfwerman, Christoffer Lundquist and Per Gessle for Roxette Recordings. It was recorded at Aerosol Grey Machine, Vallarum, Sweden and Atlantis studio, Stockholm, Sweden between February and October 2010. The Words and Music were by Per Gessle, and all songs published by Jimmy Fun Music, except “Only when I Dream” published by Hiphappy.

The album itself is very easy to listen to, which I have been doing in two locations, the first in the car, where I admit this may sound like a bad thing, it doesn't reach out and grab your attention. At no point have I found myself distracted by the music while driving, it fades nicely into the background. While as a passenger I don't find myself competing with it when trying to hold a conversation, yet when I sit back and give the music my full attention I find my feet tapping along to the beat. My second location for listening to the album has been at my desk at work. Needing to write this review has been the perfect excuse to put a headset on, ignore everyone else around me, including the phone, and just knuckling down and getting my work done free from distraction. A truly wonderful thing after being away from the office for a whole week at a training course. This album has been like a walk in the summerlands for my soul.

Roxette has delivered an album that was everything that I hoped that it would be, and has also provided a very big surprise that I didn't expect, being the bonus CD. I didn't think that I would enjoy the second disc at all. I had this preconception that because they were demos versions of the songs that they would feel rough, unfinished, and have little polish. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that they are anything but. Rather they are like an acoustic album with only Per Gessle singing, this means that songs that Marie Fredriksson has the lead on the main album have a different feel to them. In “Only When I Dream” when Marie sings the chorus lines "I touch you and I breathe you I feel you deep in side of me" as much as I tell myself she's not singing about biblical contact, my mind, it goes there. However when Per sings the same lyric my mind goes to the deep emotional bond that I keep telling myself Marie is really singing about.

In summary if you've been able to get through my mad rambling nature, the best thing that I can say about this album is that if after submitting my review, I get told that I do have to hand back the album, I'm going to stall until I can go out and buy my own copy. I give it two thumbs up, four and a half stars, or 9 out of 10. Which ever way you prefer to score. It's not perfect, because nothing is, but it's pretty damn good.