Description
Label Review.
2019 album from keyboardist, guitarist, and songwriter for A-ha. Also available on Vinyl.
Our Overview.
With a career spanning more than 35 years, former A-HA member, Norwegian musician and visual artist Magne Furuholmen is releasing his new album ‘White Xmas Lies’. 'White Xmas Lies' is Magne Furuholmen's 3rd solo-album, and as the title suggests, it is an album with a different take on Christmas - A melancholic winter-album consisting of 15 original new songs, as well as two surprising cover-versions. Furuholmen says he wanted to make an album as an “antidote to the schmaltzy Christmas-music which is spewed out every year… a seemingly never-ending stream of cheesy versions of existing Christmas songs’.
'White Xmas Lies' is a double-album with a rich blend of unusual and thoughtful Christmas material, ranging from brooding introspection and piercing observation, to hopeful, uplifting songs.
There is an urgent sense of yearning running throughout the album, with the lyrics at the centre of the project. At times cutting; (‘...family and friends, we lie and pretend, that nothing will come between us’, White Xmas Lies), and at times profoundly sad; (‘...for every Christmas Rose we’ve had, the heart has grown a thorn’, A Wintry Silence), they are also interspersed with surprising, dark humour (‘...out comes the Christmas Punch, and you just take it on the chin’, The Season to be Melancholy), the album is littered throughout with Furuholmen’s trademark word-plays (A punch-up on Boxing Day).
As a member of the iconic 80’s band a-ha, Magne Furuholmen has had an illustrious career in music spanning more than 35 years, sold more than 70 million records, toured the world over multiple times, and co-written many of the band’s hit-songs, including the decade-defining monster-hit ‘Take On Me’. Furuholmen has been awarded an Honorary Doctor’s Degree in Fine Arts (D.F.A.) at The University of Agder, Norway, and in 2012 he received a Knighthood from the Norwegian King for ‘Services to Mankind.