Under The Makeup

With their new (and allegedly last) album out next week, a-ha have finally got around to releasing the video for Under The Makeup: the first single off Cast In Steel. I’ll be honest, aside from the soaring James Bond-esque strings, it’s not one of my favourites by them and that was a bit worrying. Thankfully, the next offering, called The Wake sounds much more like my kind of thing, replete, as it is, with OMD-style ding-y keyboards and an 80’s synthpop feel, but more of that sometime soon.

So – here it is, starring Sofie Gråbøl and Frida “no accents in my surname” Farrell:

Sadly, given all the teasers and the generated suspense, they messed up a bit with the upload to YouTube, meaning that lots of Europe, Africa and apparently all of North and South America couldn’t watch due to “international content restrictions”. Thus, the video above is uploaded from the ridiculously named “WeWantA-HAandMortenHarket InTheFrenchMedia”. They might have a looney name and a niche agenda, but they can at least put 200 seconds of (ahem – pirated) video on the internet better than Universal music.
So… y’know… good for them.

As for the video… ja. I’ve watched it several times now, and I’m still not 100% sure of what’s going on, aside from the unfortunate demise of our protagonist. Are those… are those… Yurts? Do Pal and Magne escape? Whose side are they on anyway? What’s in the briefcase and why is that woman preparing a butternut in the middle of the Scandinavian wilderness?

Are you as lost as I am?

All in all, it’s not a great start to the whole Cast In Steel saga. There was never going to be massive commercial appeal for this anyway, but please – it should at least leave the fans happy. This, awkwardly… hasn’t… doesn’t.

Oh dear.

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