We went to see The Real Group in concert. I was thinking we would all love it, and instead we came home quite disappointed.

We saw/heard them live two years ago, together with The Swingles. That concert (which I now see I didn’t write about) was a mixed bag – some songs I really liked, others were unimpressive.

I was hoping we would this time get more of the good stuff. Unfortunately I feel that TRG has moved in the wrong direction since then.

The two best songs today, by far, were two folk songs, one Swedish “gångarlåt” and one Latvian. There was depth and emotion in them. The rest of the repertoire… less so. The songs newly written by members of TRG themselves were the least interesting. Possibly they were technically impressive, but I don’t have the ear or the knowledge to appreciate that. To me, these songs just sounded light-weight, superficially cheery. Tra-la-la, and an hour later I’ve forgotten them already.