More than 52,000 fans saw Hov1 say goodbye after ten years with a final performance at Gärdet in Stockholm. But the country's music critics were almost touchingly in agreement that it did not become the great and pompous farewell they had hoped for – and that the fans deserved.
"Except for the size of the pyrotechnics and the stage, and, yes, some emotional interludes, everything feels like a concert like any other, and not an epic ending", writes Markus Larsson in Aftonbladet.
He sets two plus and continues:
"Sometimes it's too clumsy and stiff."
"Sings falsely"
Lykke Eder-Ekman sets a two on Svenska Dagbladet's six-grade scale and states that "Ludwig Kronstrand sings falsely" and that the songs sound worse than usual.
"Not because I don't like the music, but because everyone seems tired. Not angry with each other, just unengaged. It clashes with the elaborate presentation, it's like fireworks that go off every five minutes."
Dagens Nyheter's Sara Martinsson sets a three and thinks that the energy is lacking.
"Hov1's strength as a band has always been that they have been able to switch between the sentimental and the contrary. In the contrast between fragility and rowdiness, they have found their completely unique space. At this final concert (at least for a while, one assumes) they take the audience there too rarely. When everything is over and the last fireworks have fizzled out, it feels most like you've been standing and poking at a sore spot."
"Static"
Even Expressen's Anders Dahlbom gives three wasps in rating, but states that the concert is saved by the audience's enormous engagement and response.
"So when it becomes static up there on stage (and it does quite often) with three artists who become more like song leaders and have trouble grasping the concert's magnitude, it's the audience that carries Hov1 forward."
But SVT's Per Sinding-Larsen goes against the current and praises Hov1, who gets a four.
They make choruses that go straight in and with diary-like, love-filled texts from heart to heart. They have ALWAYS focused on singing and working for their own audience. They have ignored all of us others. They are children of their time who dance on through life after this evening and that's what their incredible audience does too, he says.
