Aftonbladet 130719
Lavishly rich evening with BAO – offered 56 songs
By: JENS PETERSON
Photo: ROGER LUNDSTEN
Benny Andersson Band
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Horticultural Society.
Audience: 5 200
Duration: 4 hours 10 minutes
GOTHENBURG. Helen Sjöholm, Tommy Körberg and Kalle Moraeus sing beloved favorites. The dance-lovers get all varieties. And in addition a bouquet of new songs. Benny Andersson offers a generous evening. Maybe too generous.
When they’ve played for over four hours Benny Andersson Band walks down into the audience and continues “Cirkus finemang” on the dance floor in the audience. The moon shines in the warm summer night. They finish the song, walk back on stage and play “O, klang and jubeltid”. About the hopes of life and dreams and melancholy.
Sings ABBA songs
An amazing finale to a lavishly rich evening. BAO plays 56 songs plus a singalong medley. They play a couple of songs which have never been heard. “Det föll en sten från mitt hjärta” (A stone fell from my heart) is a strong pop song in text message-age. They play two from the musical “Hjälp sökes”. For the first time on stage they play the marvellously beautiful “Saknadens rum”. They sing “One man, one woman”, one of four ABBA songs this evening. The instrumental song “Lauren” have had English lyrics and becomes “Sit tight” with an excellent Körberg. They play “Jag är blott en man” (I am but a man) that Björn and Benny and Stikkan Anderson wrote for Jarl Kulle’s Ture Sventon in 1972. Benny also salutes Stikkan by playing his “Tivedshambo”. Fresh breezes with new numbers for those who have seen BAO before. But they have also kept everything that’s made the band loved. They line up aces in all sorts of genres. The musicians are on and so loaded that they dance.
Sjöholm fantastic
The Gothenburg audience are good dancers. In “Du är min man” (You are my man) so many people fill the dance floor that the wooden fences bulge outwards and the colored lanterns swing in Fats Domino-time. It’s so crowded that it’s only possible to dance cheek-to-cheek. Helen Sjöholm is fantastic and makes the evergreen chart topper sound new. She is superb in everything at the premiere. The folk music swings wonderfully as well, but all highlights are not danceable. Tommy Körbergs “Jag hör” (I hear) and Helen Sjöholm in “Bortom sol och måne” (Beyond the sun and the moon) are experiences that get five out of five. Music to dance to, music that warms the heart. This is what summer sounds like.