Roxette
Travelling

For the love of the nostalgic and the disdain of those who wanted to see them in deep and eternal oblivion, Roxette has returned to the grim stages of the music biz after a curtain call lasting a decade, years in which the duo has done little more than release bland greatest hits and vacuous compilations while waiting for Marie Fredriksson's recovery from treatment for her brain tumor. Charm School, released last year, proposed the group's original playful 80s rock style after the eurodance turn of Room Service and Have a Nice Day and also allowed a decent return to the Swedish and European charts, although it forgot the glory achieved in the The Look-Joyride era. Not satisfied with the miraculous Roxette revival, the award-winning Roxette pair looked forward, or rather backward, trying in every way to reinvigorate a band almost considered over that, however, twenty years ago was able to charm even the difficult tastes of the Yank crowd, not always keen on welcoming European novelties.

From this blatant statement of intent, Travelling was conceived, a sort of collection of unreleased pieces, rarities, unreleased tracks, precious gems, newly crafted songs, and live recordings encapsulating in a single tracklist the work of the last fifteen years of life of the Scandinavians. Halfway between a studio album and yet another compilation made specifically to rekindle the flame of a (partial) resurrection, Travelling: Songs from Studios, Stages, Hotelrooms & Other Strange Places presents itself to the public as the perfect continuation of Tourism (with the same subtitle), the similar multi-flavored collection born from the Joyride tour of 1991-92, and thus represents its "celebrative" crowning twenty years later.

Currently almost unnoticed, poorly advertised, and lacking a distinct soul, the new project struggles to reach adequacy that was amply surpassed with the frivolous rock-new wave of Charm School, offering a curriculum of easily forgettable and not very striking tracks even for a Roxette-addicted. Indeed, in the cauldron of Travelling there is everything and a bit of the worst of the Nordic band, a mix of scraps and discards specially removed from the musty, oppressive mothballs of the major's storage, rearranged to the best of their ability, blended and compacted into a hybrid album of unreleased/greatest hits.

As already pointed out, very little lends itself to an honorable mention or even a dignified regard; among these stands the rock version of "Stars" (the original eurohouse is from Have a Nice Day, 1999, ed.), the decent bursts of post-glory vigor in the single "It's Possible", some pleasant pop-folk hints in "Excuse Me, Sir, Do You Want Me To Check On Your Wife?" and some atmospheric-nostalgic ballads like "It Must Have Been Love (The Weight Of The World, Perfect Excuse, See Me)".

No, Roxette has not "ended". The Duran Duran of chilly Sweden, reluctant to retire into the rest home of pillars of decades that will never return, should still avoid 2.0 remixing and laughable mixes and rather focus on a future that could still hold great surprises for them. Survival strategies aside, the fact is that with this Travelling Roxette has taken an unnecessary step backward, not quite in line with the commendable recovery of Charm School. Miss Marie, Mister Per: let's climb back up, please!