Their Helsinki concert was no exception. Roxette performed an amazingly fast-paced set of hits to an audience of some 6,500 people. The maximum capacity of Hartwall Arena in concerts is 12,000, but in this concert the seat availability was more limited. Due to this the arena was pretty nicely packed with people. International fans had again followed the band, even from as far as New Zealand.

The band started right on time at 21:00 and played with no time to breathe for two solid hours. The arrangements of songs have stayed mostly the same from the Charm School tour. During that tour, Roxette visited the same arena almost exactly three years ago (huh, time flies!). Now that Dea is in the band, there was a nice new version of “Watercolours In The Rain” with only Marie and Dea on the stage, and Marie doing a superb performance with her voice.

I don’t know what it is, but I seem to like the low-tempo, more acoustic songs of the set. My favorites were probably “The Heart Shaped Sea” and “Listen To Your Heart”. The guitar-filled “Real Sugar”, “7Twenty7”, and “Joyride” are not so much my cup of tea. Christoffer seems to go on and on with his solos until his fingers bleed. The songs are great and the musicians are clearly enjoying their jam sessions, but they could concentrate more on the singing and less on the guitar solos. At the same time, I must say that Per and the others are magicians in setting the tempo of the concert so that high-speed bubblegum pop and beautiful ballads are balancing each other perfectly.

And how about Marie? That’s the question many fans are asking. Her singing is still great (especially in “Listen To Your Heart”) but it saddens me to see her poor physical condition. Compared to the previous Hartwall Arena concert, she’s moving even less on the stage, just standing and holding on to her mic stand after she was walked there by a band member. I really hope she has enough time to rest before the rather exhausting leg of the tour begins in 2015.