Gig review: Roxette, Glasgow SECC

By DAVID POLLOCK
Published on 05/07/2012 00:00

“DO YOU know Sweden?” asked Roxette’s bass player, let loose by guitarist Per Gessle for a bit of audience interaction.

“It can be very cold, it can be very dark. But it’s not all Stieg Larsson.”

All we needed was an Abba cover for the big book of Scandinavian clichés to have been used to its full potential.

Roxette – enhanced onstage from the original duo of Gessle and singer Marie Fredriksson, still a striking woman with the build and shocking blonde hair of a Bond villainess at the age of 54 – are a strange anachronism in 2012.

A group who were castigated in their period of greatest success two decades ago for offering by-the-numbers pop balladeering, their two-hour set here was nevertheless packed with simple and direct mega-hits, the very fact they were all self-penned by the band seeming almost like a badge of DIY credibility amidst the unimaginative contemporary churn of covers and reworkings.

Their set, of course, reflected nothing like a classic slice of rock history, with their uninspiring delivery enlivened only by their communal taste for stonewashed black denim and Fredriksson’s grand guignol, crystal-shattering holler on old hits like Dressed For Success, Crash! Boom! Bang! and Joyride.

Yet a markedly less than full SECC still greeted these songs with nostalgic admiration, and full-voiced choruses of It Must Have Been Love, The Look and Listen to Your Heart demonstrated that at least their somewhat easily pleased fanbase seemed happy.

Rating: **