Charm School

Personnel: Per Gessle (vocals, guitar); Marie Fredriksson (vocals); Christoffer Lundquist (guitar, keyboards, programming); Emil Carlsson, Lotta Weber Sjöholm, Tomas Ebrelius, Johanna Skoglund (strings); Clarence Öfwerman (keyboards, programming); Jens Jansson (drums).
Audio Mixer: Ronny Lahti.
Recording information: Aerosol Grey Machine, Vallarum, Sweden (02/2010-10/2010); Atlantis studio, Stockholm, Sweden (02/2010-10/2010); Room 166, Innside Hotel, Munich, Germany (02/2010-10/2010); Tits & Ass Studio, Halmstad, Sweden (02/2010-10/2010); Aerosol Grey Machine, Vallarum, Sweden (12/2009); Atlantis studio, Stockholm, Sweden (12/2009); Room 166, Innside Hotel, Munich, Germany (12/2009); Tits & Ass Studio, Halmstad, Sweden (12/2009).
Photographers: Mikael Bolyos; Ulf Magnusson; Important Pete; Gabriel Gessle; Ekaterina Belinkaya.
Returning to action after a decade-long hiatus, Roxette don't skip a beat on 2011's Charm School. Roxette were never in the thick of things, never setting the pace, but they did reflect their times during their 1988-1991 peak. They still reflect those times 20 years later, still favoring the brightly colored productions of the late `80s, still relying on cavernous drums and squealing fuzz guitars skipping over tightly wound guitar riffs, piling on synth after synth, every element accentuating their enormous hooks. Roxette may be a band out of time on Charm School but, well, that's their charm: they're still unapologetically big pop, they still celebrate melody over everything else. Sometimes things crawl just a tad on Charm School -- it's not the power ballads that sag but the chugging midtempo tunes -- but it serves up enough surging soft rock and fizzy pop like "Big Black Cadillac" and "She's Got Nothing On (But the Radio)" to make this a successful comeback. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine