Tony Balogh has written a review of the new album on Hallandsposten, the local newspaper of Roxette’s home ground, Halmstad.

Balogh refers to Roxette’s online chat and to Norwegian Ketil’s (Hi Ketil! :-) question about if the album sounds too fresh and too little Roxette. Balogh thinks this is a very good question. “Those who have followed Roxette through the years - from ’Pearls Of Passion’ to the latest studio album ’Crash! Boom! Bang!’ about 40 million records later - know that they’ve at the same time got a short lecture about what rock-pop sounded like when the albums were released.”

Balogh says it’s never wrong to get new influence and ideas, but it can also be disastrous if the band loses something from their identity at the same time.

Balogh notices that there are very few guitars on this album, but that Marie sings better than ever. He thinks “Crush On You” is almost techno, “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around What’s Already Gone” is a classic 80’s dance track and “7twenty7” a song á la Depeche Mode in 1986. “But is this Roxette?” he asks.

“’Stars’ tries to be like a Prodigy song, but it has become an E-type eurotechno track. However, the chorus with the children’s choir and quiet piano saves the song.” Balogh thinks that “Cooper” sounds a bit like Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue’s duet “Where The Wild Roses Grow”, just like I’ve also said.

In the end of his review he answers to Ketil’s question: “It sounds a lot of 1999, it sounds Roxette, but everything isn’t as top-ranking as it was 10 years ago.”

The administrators of www.haveaniceday.nu have sent a message to everyone who have subscribed their mailing list. The only problem is that the message they sent is only in Swedish. Here it is in English:

On Monday it’s time. Roxette’s long-awaited album “Have A Nice Day” is finally available in the record stores. The advance interest has been enormous among the press, record sellers and fans. This has also been possible to notice from the extremely high number of visitors on our new homepage. We know that both Per and Marie have followed the development of the site with pleasure and most importantly shown great interest in all the exciting discussion on the message board. We hope of course that we’ll see you also in the future and we can promise you more activities in the site also after the release of the album.

Now, go on and vote for your favourite songs at www.haveaniceday.nu!

• www.haveaniceday.nu

Today is the official release date of the new Roxette album, titled “Have A Nice Day”. The album has already been available in several countries, in Argentina and Finland, for example.

The countdown at www.haveaniceday.nu is now over and they have a new competition going on. You only have to vote for the four best songs on the new album and you can win all eight albums Roxette has done, a T-shirt, a poster or a badge.

• www.haveaniceday.nu

The Official Roxette Fan Club has published their new site on the Internet. The fan shop has been updated to support euro currency. Per Gessle himself will be writing news to their news section.

• OfficialRoxetteFanclub

Finnish pulp magazine 7 päivää has a short article about Roxette. According to the magazine Marie and Per are going to take their children with them on the band’s world tour which will be launched next June (!). “We want our children and spouses to be with us on the tour, even though it means more work for us. How are we going to get over with the hotel life? How will we get our children to bed in time? We have to discuss all this with our partners”, says the duo in 7 päivää magazine.

The German EMI has now a 30-sec sound clip of every track on the new album available on their site. The clips are reported to be different than on www.haveaniceday.nu site which still has its own sound clip countdown going on.

• EMI Electrola

The UK/Ireland fan club has now moved to its permanent home. The new URL is easy to remember: roxette.co.uk. Check out the site, it’s huge!

• Rox Britannia

Roxette was back on stage in Sweden today evening. They performed “Wish I Could Fly” at the Grammis gala. The 30th annual show was broadcasted “live” on TV4 from the Royal Tennis Hall in Stockholm.

The show wasn’t really broadcasted live: it was recorded a couple of hours before it was shown on TV. The media in Sweden have criticized this “cheating” strongly. Roxette’s performance was done playback.

• Aftonbladet’s Swedish article

A reader from Latvia reports that the cassette version of Roxette’s new album “Have A Nice Day” has been available from February 16, at least in the capital Riga. The CD version will be in the shops later.

Per and Marie were in Finland last Friday. They were supposed to be in Finland both Friday and Saturday, but the trip had to be shortened to one day because the Finnish air traffic controllers are on strike and the Helsinki airport was closed on Saturday.

Because of their tight schedule they were only in Pasila where the main TV channels have their studios. First they recorded “Wish I Could Fly” playback for Miss Finland competition (it was shown yesterday) and then they did an interview for Jyrki in the same studio (the interview was shown today). After lunch they went to another TV channel’s studio where they did a short clip for a TV show called Dynamo (will be shown in March).

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet them, but maybe next time… :-)