At the very least, the opening title track, which the band unsuccessfully tried to get into the Eurovision contest, is a solidly middle-of-the-pack preview of ABBA's future greatness as a singles act. It's not great by any means, but it has a decent enough chorus, and more importantly the sound is on the right track, with a sense of power that really projects the female voices when most necessary. But alas, the only other place on the album that really gives a comparable sense of the group really appreciating what they had whenever they decided to have the women swoop in with a strong hook is in the otherwise completely forgettable "Love Isn't Easy (But it Sure is Hard Enough)," when Björn briefly clears out of the way for the "Now look at that guy, he's making me cry ..." part, yet this also highlights something the group had yet to work out. Of all of the problems that the first two albums have, perhaps the biggest is that the men sing way, WAY too much: Björn has by far the most lead vocal credits on this album, and it wouldn't be until Arrival three years later that the men would realize that the group functioned best with them in a supporting role (with occasional lead roles). It's not that I think the material with them singing lead would have been especially better with the women on lead (the material with the women on lead here is pretty dire as well), but I do think that the band's potential had a hard ceiling until the songwriting shifted to centering primarily around the women.

In terms of specific songs, well, there's not a lot that's worth diving into individually. I do think it's worth it for anybody with some awareness of the group (but perhaps not of this relatively obscure early period) to give a listen to "Nina, Pretty Ballerina" at some point, if only because "Dancing Queen" (from three years later) has a similar lyrical concept, but is about 1000 times better of a song; comparing these two tracks, I think, is the clearest way to illustrate just how much the group improved in a relatively short period of time. Otherwise, though, the tracks on here should either be left alone or used as a purgative, especially the hokey-as-hell up-with-people anthem "People Need Love" (their debut single!!). Also, not only are both "Me and Bobby and Bobby's Brother" and "He is Your Brother" mediocre songs at best, but placing them back-to-back, followed by (on the international edition at least) "She's My Kind of Girl" and "I Am Just a Girl," is just lousy album construction (i.e. two songs with the word "Brother" in the title followed by two songs with the word "Girl" in the title). I do kinda like the up-tempo introduction of the closing "Rock'n Roll Band," and there's some really interesting guitar all through that song, but it would have done better with a different lyricist, vocal delivery, and vocal melody.

Still, everyone needs to start somewhere, and the name of the group at least gives me the chance to pretend it's not really an ABBA album. It's worth a couple of listens for informational purposes, but I can't imagine many people finding themselves in the mood for this one when they could just as easily listen to one of their good albums.

So why as high of a grade as I give it, aside from "Waterloo" being awesome? Because, for all of the weak and frustrating aspects, the group repeatedly shows glimpses of its future, of a sense that they're not that far from breaking through after all (like a late-season call-up in baseball who struggles but then comes back the next spring and dominates because they got their mistakes out of their system). "My Mama Said," dorky lyrics and all (about an overbearing mother), has a danceable cool to it that might go un-noticed in a different context but that doesn't sound that far out of place from Arrival, and the following "Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)," even if not quite cooked all the way, still gives a sense of the kind of majesty the band would soon be able to pull off without making fools of themselves. And dagnabbit, I can't dislike "Honey, Honey," even if it's certainly one of the weaker songs that made it onto either of the ABBA Gold volumes; it's lightweight, but lots of good ABBA songs are lightweight, and this is good enough for me.

In short, as with the album that came before it, this isn't an essential listen for most fans of the band (you could easily get by just hearing the title track on a compilation), and it probably won't be of much interest to anybody but people who want to become ABBA experts. And yet, even in its failures, I find this album fascinating because of the way in which it fails, and I can't help but feel some enchantment in those moments when they briefly put it together.

There are some weaker songs that have at least a faint whiff of the tackier aspects of the last album, and these somewhat limit how much I can enjoy this album on the whole. "Tropical Loveland" isn't exactly bad per se, and simply by virtue of being a little brisker and having more of the women and less Björn it's better than "Sitting in the Palmtree" could have ever hoped for, but "this is a better version of a typical track from the first two albums" is a pretty low compliment given what the band could accomplish thereafter. I also don't especially care for either of the songs with Björn on lead vocals, even if I will admit getting some small dorky pleasure out of singing along to them if nobody else is around; "Man in the Middle" proves that it's somehow possible to have a song feature clavinet and not sound cool, while "Rock Me" (a successful single in Australia) is fairly memorable but not really in the same class as the rest of the album in that department.

The rest of the album is just delightful, both in terms of the singles (in addition to "Rock Me" six other tracks from this album were released as singles) and the deeper tracks. The opening "Mamma Mia" may have long become a cliche because of the musical of the same name, but I absolutely love it; the mixture of marimba with the guitars (Björn on rhythm, Janne Schaffer on lead) is a great representation of the band's mix of the conventional with the slightly exotic, and the vocal parts show that the band had found a good thing in incorporating elements of music hall into their sound. "Bang-A-Boomerang" (especially in the warm recurring guitar line and the ecstatic build into the chorus), "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" (the song that broke them huge in Australia, with an effortlessly catchy but sophisticated vocal melody over a nostalgic tune that owes more to mid-50s European pop music than 50s American rock'n'roll), and the closing "So Long" (actually the lead single, and a bit of a flop, but a wonderful rollicking album closer) are all terrific, but my favorite of the singles is almost certainly "SOS." Björn later stated that this was the song that helped them finally figure out what they wanted to sound like, and it's a showcase of all kinds of things that make me like ABBA: the effective mix of the melodramatic and the ecstatic; the striking piano line and the mystical synth parts; and a flat-out magnificent vocal delivery in both the verses and the chorus.

(I would be remiss if I did not mention here that Pierce Brosnan's mutilation of this song in the movie version of Mamma Mia is both one of the funniest and one of the most horrifying things my wife and I have ever watched together, and one of my pleasures in life is doing an imitation of Brosnan singing that song in order to make my wife groan at me)

The other single is "I've Been Waiting for You," and it's a nice enough bit of atmospheric beauty (with a lovely chorus and some really nice tasteful guitar decoration, even if I don't love the verses), but I have trouble thinking of it as a single (and apparently the public agrees with me because it tanked) and instead think of it as a deep cut. And that is just as well, because the remaining deep cuts are just marvelous. "Hey, Hey Helen" is the rare case of a gritty ABBA rocker that I immensely enjoy, with a stomping beat in the verses (with the women weaving around the guitars and drums effectively) and a hit-you-in-the-face-with-a-baseball-bat chorus that has what I still can't place as a guitar or keyboard (but is magnificent either way) popping up between each phrase, and that's all before we even account for the clavinet-dominated funk breakdown in the middle that somehow manages to sound fantastic. And yet, this still pales before the marvelous instrumental "Intermezzo No.1," where Benny gets to indulge his inner Rick Wakeman / Keith Emerson for 4 minutes and not only doesn't make a fool of himself but creates a flat-out show-stopper in the process. If you've never heard this track, hunt it down right now and bask in the glory of ABBA-prog

In terms of rating, a high A / low B feels right to me, since they still had some things to work on around the edges, even as they managed to produce some of the most delightful music they'd ever create. Every ABBA album from here on out is worth owning, and if you haven't heard this before (maybe you decided the singles were all you need), I hope you'll give this a shot and that it will give you as much enjoyment as the best parts have long given me.

On a certain level, I think it matters that ABBA Gold opens with the two best songs from Arrival and two of the very best songs they ever did. "Dancing Queen" is nothing short of a miracle, a song that takes roughly the same lyrical premise of "Nina, Pretty Ballerina" and manages to make a stone-cold classic out of it, overplayed as it might be on a certain level. Unlike on ABBA, when the band had some internal confusion initially about what songs they had recorded might resonate with the public best (hence the baffling decision to release "So Long" as the lead single), "Dancing Queen" was the lead single, and I find it interesting that this was the first song the band did in the studio and that everybody involved knew it would be enormous even before they finished it. It's almost ridiculous to try and do any commentary on the song itself, yet I must observe that the decision to song not just with the chorus, but the second half of the chorus, is a song structuring detail that doesn't have many counterparts (among other things, how many songs out there have elaborate enough choruses that starting from the second half would even make a lick of sense?).

(as a side note: when I went to a Roger Waters concert in 2007, I remember that the stage show initially featured a projected image of a radio tuner, and when a hand reached out at one point to move the tuner to a station that was playing "Dancing Queen," everybody booed, because of course they did)

And yet, I've always felt that "Knowing Me, Knowing You" is a little bit better. There is so much stuff packed into this song, and the funny thing is that you could remove many or even most of the supplemental details and be left with a perfectly nice downbeat ditty about a relationship ending. And yet, those supplemental details are all here, and they're fantastic, whether it's (this list is non-exclusive) the Björn-sung "This time this time we're through / this time we're through we're really through," or the bombastic keyboards in the bridge, or the extra bit of intensity in the guitars in the chorus, or the efficient licks thrown in between the verses, or even just the way in which they selectively alternate the Agnetha and Anni-Frid vocal parts. For me, this isn't just a good song, this isn't just an excellent song, this is a Mount Olympus "I can't believe I got to be alive after this song was recorded" level of song. Interestingly, this was released as the final single for the album, and it played a large part in getting the band to the point where they could be over-exposed to the level that created the angst that largely drove The Album.

Lest you think that this album is just the two biggest singles plus "Money, Money, Money" (the third single to make Gold, and one that I really enjoy and that has a delightful Anni-Frid performance, but also one where if somebody said they disliked it I'd totally get it), though, let me assure you otherwise. The remaining single from the album (only released in Japan, not making much of an impact) was "That's Me," a ridiculously catchy number with energetic piano and synth parts (there's one descending synth line in here that's one of my favorite things on any ABBA album), and while I understand why it's not comparatively well-known, that just means it's another reason to hunt down the band's albums instead of just their best known songs (and for what it's worth, it's one of Agnetha's favorite ABBA songs). In terms of deeper cuts, each half has three, and I like all of them a lot. The opening "When I Kissed the Teacher" is gloriously lush for such an upbeat quick-tempo'd song, with silly lyrics about a student acting on their crush; I could see somebody rolling their eyes at how Agnetha sings something like "Leaning over me / He was trying to explain the laws of geometry / And I couldn't help it / I just had to kiss the teacher," but dang it I love them. Perhaps better is "My Love, My Life," a ballad with a spectacular lead Agnetha vocal (and a just-as-spectacular supporting Anni-Frid vocal), and with one of my favorite arrangement details on the album (the little melancholy bend-downs on guitar). If you can't feel at least a twinge of emotion in the build-up to Agnetha soaring sky-high on "You are still my love and my life / Still my one and only," then yeah, maybe ABBA just isn't for you. Rounding out the side, then, is "Dum Dum Diddle," and yes it's pretty ridiculous in the lyrics, yet it does have one of my favorite so-dorky-it's-awesome ABBA lyrics ("You're only smiling / When you play your violin"), and the music has some terrific synth runs and an ever-shifting vocal melody that's another example of Benny and Björn firing on all cylinders as songwriters.

On the second half, after "Money, Money, Money" and "That's Me," the album rounds out with three tracks that some might consider a bit of a letdown (and in the most technical sense I suppose they're weaker than some of the peaks that came before) but that I think help bring the album to a satisfying conclusion. "Why Did it Have to be Me" is the album's lone venture in giving Björn a prominent lead vocal role, but there's something to be said about how this time he avoided hard rock and instead produced a retro-tinged groover that gives Agnetha and Anni-Frid ample opportunities to take on the vocals themselves, and I enjoy it a lot. "Tiger" is another silly one lyrically (the verses are about how cities are dangerous, and then the chorus out-of-nowhere turns the singer into a tiger), but I really like the memorable bombast, and I bet it was a blast to sing (not just in the louder parts but also in the eerie "Yellow eyes are glowing like the neon lights ..." parts). And finally, the album ends with the instrumental title track, which wouldn't have worked in any other spot on the album but is a perfect capper: it's clearly based on some (presumably Swedish) folk melody, and the stately static synth parts work extremely well with the wordless harmonies that are laid on top of it in a more pronounced fashion as the track goes on. It's a deeply satisfying way to end things.

Overall, then, I enjoy this album a tremendous amount, and more than that I can't help but observe that, if this super-slick, alternately silly and bombastic form of European pop-rock was done by an act without this much talent, I could easily see myself getting annoyed with much of this kind of music and even flat-out not liking it. ABBA was one of a kind, and while I could end up changing my mind again at some point on whether this is actually their peak, this is an essential listen for anybody who likes 70s pop music and doesn't categorically hate the presence of some slickness.

What I find especially interesting about the band's new willingness to take chances it might not have before is that, while this risk taking led to some amazing high points on the album and in the band's career, it also led to some clear missteps that the band wouldn't have even considered previously. "Move On" is an interesting and resonant waltz with what I hear as some clear Swedish folk influences, but it also makes a serious mistake in letting Björn not only have a verse but having him speak his parts, and the end result is a track that sounds much cheesier to me than it probably deserved to sound. I also find myself getting a little fidgety during the Anni-Frid spotlight "I Wonder (Departure)" (one of the tracks from the mini-musical); I get that it's supposed to sound like a big climactic emotional spotlight during a musical, and I'm generally not opposed to such things, but while I certainly don't hate it or anything, it's easily one of my least favorite things the band did after the first two albums. ABBA can certainly work without a strong rhythmic pulse underpinning it, but this also makes it easier for the band to fail, and I think the band kinda failed here.

I definitely don't think the band failed on the rest of the album, though. The album contributed three tracks to ABBA Gold, and all of them are stone-cold classics. The lead single was "The Name of the Game," a surprisingly sophisticated (given expectations at the time) five-minute song with a solid bassline (with discernable traces of funk; the inspiration was apparently the bass from "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder) and interesting keyboard part (with moody guitars poking in from time to time), as well as interesting shifts between tense low-key dramatic vocals and big ebullient dramatic vocals. There's a small part of me that sometimes thinks the coda (which is just vamping the chorus over and over) might go a little long, but that's only sometimes, and the rest of the time I focus more on all of the other interesting aspects of the track. The second single was "Take a Chance on Me," which features an unstoppable backing-vocal part that you'll either find incredible or ridiculous (I choose the former), along with some of my favorite lead vocals from the band ever (both when the women combine forces and when they take turns in the verses) and a fascinating drum part that shows that the band's eventual transition to full-blown disco was completely inevitable. The third ABBA Gold entry, then, was not actually a single, but the B-side to "Eagle" (more on that one later): "Thank You for the Music" was indeed part of the mini-musical, and unlike with "I Wonder," the Broadway/cabaret/whatever feel to this one ends up as part of the reason I like it so much. Favorite lyrical moment: "Who found out that nothing can capture a heart like a melody can? Well, whoever it was, I'm a fan." This is one of their best songs for sure.

And yet, it's at most my third favorite song on this album. Perhaps this is somewhat because the first pro-ABBA major music reviewer I came across (George Starostin) loved this song, but I like to think that, even if I had never found his site, I would still be a giant fan of the album-opening "Eagle," because this song is amazing in a way that truly makes it stand alone in their catalogue (it's without a doubt my favorite ABBA song). Lyrically, I've long read this as a song about a need to escape, and a song about envying the freedom that an animal like an eagle like has in life (note that the song's premise isn't that the singer is an eagle, it's that they dream they're an eagle after seeing them on the horizon); it's a song that wouldn't have really made sense from them earlier in their career but that would definitely make sense in 1977, when they were starting to get crushed by fame. As much as I admire the lyrics (as well as the fantastic vocal delivery), though, it's the instrumental arrangements that make me really adore it. Everything hits exactly the right level of majesty, whether it's the main synth line, or the glorious guitar parts (the lead parts in this track are handled by Janne Schaffer and Lasse Wellander; note especially the amazing solo in the coda, where the parts get just virtuosic enough without going too far), or the stately drumming. I would note that there are multiple single edits (one of them shortens the song from nearly 6 minutes to about 3:30), but dammit this is a song where I want all of it.

Rounding out the first side (sandwiched between "Take a Chance on Me" and "The Name of the Game") is "One Man, One Woman," a track that one might be tempted to dismiss because it wasn't a single, but that instead reinforces that the band was masterful at writing great deep cuts as well. Anni-Frid's tale of a couple trying to figure out how to save their marriage is a touching one, delivered with real pathos and gusto, and the arrangement is really interesting, a terrific balance between the keyboards (piano and synths) and guitars that typically form their sound but not in quite this way, with some strings merged into the mix in a way that augments the sound without suffocating it. Flipping over to the second side, after the slight dud of "Move On," the band decides to shift into full-on "rock" mode with "Hole in Your Soul," but unlike on "Watch Out" or "King Kong Song," where they didn't sound like they knew what the hell they were doing, here the song feels like a logical variation of the general style they had established for themselves to this point. This track actually had its origins in the mini-musical: in particular, the bridge ("Ah-ha (ah-ha ah-aa) / You paint your world and use all colours ...") borrows extensively from the (unrecorded) track "Get On Your Carousel," and this part is an interesting contrast to the rest. Truth be told, lyrics about rock 'n' roll notwithstanding, this is much more of a faster and more intense version of a regular ABBA song than it is a rocker per se, but that's hardly a bad thing (and among other things it gets Agnetha to hit an ungodly high note), and I'd be remiss if I didn't observe that this absolutely sounds like a prototype for some of the up-tempo "rockers" that The Moody Blues would create during the 80s (e.g. listen to this and "Sitting at the Wheel" back-to-back right now and you'll realize that the latter is basically an ABBA song).

Finally, then, we have the closer, another one of my absolute favorites from the band. "I'm a Marionette" (the finale of the mini-musical) hardly sounds like ABBA at all if you ignore the vocals, and I mean that as a sincere compliment: this track sounds to me more than anything like a Buggles prototype, 2+ years before The Age of Plastic, what with the dark bassline, the ominous choice of keyboard tones, and the way every detail in the arrangement (whether in the percussion, or in the jittery guitar soloing, or in the strings, especially that spectacular downward disco strings swoop around 2:18) is designed to make fame sound like the worst thing in the world. Favorite lyrical moment: "'Look this way, just a little smile,' is what they say / 'You look better on the photograph if you laugh, that's okay.'" Because of the somewhat backwards way in which I got into ABBA (short version, I knew the deep cuts from Arrival and this really well before I knew some of the bigger hit singles from other albums), this is one of the first ABBA songs I really fell in love with, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Is this actually their best album? I dunno, maybe, it really depends how I feel on a given day. The highs on this album are about as high as the band ever got, but at the same time this does have some lows, whereas Arrival hits similar highs and also has a higher floor, so it's basically a coin flip for me. Regardless, I would suggest that the absolute bare minimum of an acceptable ABBA collection would include ABBA Gold, Arrival, and this one. They would do really interesting albums after this one, but there’s a magic here that they’d never entirely recapture.

Returning to Voulez-Vous itself, ABBA decided sometime after 1977 to veer away from the world of art-rock and fully into the world of disco, but that's still not the biggest thing that happened to ABBA since the last album. No, the biggest thing that happened was that, in January 1979, Agnetha and Björn announced they were getting divorced (I don't know full details but I'm gonna guess this had been building for a while), which marked the first steps towards the band's ultimate destiny of becoming the Europop Fleetwood Mac (it's worth noting also that Anni-Frid and Benny had just gotten married in late 1978 after a long engagement). For the time being, the band did its best to keep the obvious tensions of the situation from leaking into the music, but the way in which the album so aggressively gives off the vibe at times of being about fun, parties, and cocaine strikes me a bit as overcompensation in retrospect. This low-key tension strikes me as neither especially good nor bad, but it does strike me as interesting, and it helps to give important context to where the sound would go over the next couple of albums.

So anyway, this is indeed the band's disco album, and for largely this reason I've noticed over the years that, at least in critical circles where I pay some attention, the reputation of this album has largely been tied to how people have felt about disco overall. Personally, when I was younger, I would have kept this one at a bit of a distance in relation to the albums around it, which seemed "classier" to me for various reasons, but as I have aged and have settled into an unironic position of "Actually Disco Was A Good Thing," I've come to see this as essential in much the same way the band's other albums are essential. It wouldn't be quite right to say that the band's firm critical trashing in the US for so many years was entirely because of the general public's hard rejection of disco, but it wasn't entirely unrelated either, and I can't help but sense that this one, by virtue of being "the disco album" from the band, got a lot of vitriol in particular. Fortunately, at least as of 2021, things have improved on this front, and the disco aspects that once might have seemed shocking in a bad way now sound fairly normal.

Also, it's not as if the disco influences really dominate the album as much as its reputation suggests: half of the umbrella falls under the clear umbrella of disco, while the other half covers all sorts of ground. Even the opening "As Good As New," which definitely qualifies as disco in the verses, isn't one that you can simply summarize as a "disco song," because there's a pretty clear seam between the disco portions and the chorus (and accompanying instrumental parts), which definitely come from a more traditional approach to things from the band. Mind you, both the disco and non-disco portions of "As Good As New" are really nice, but put together they give an immediate sense that this will be a slightly less coherent album than one might necessarily expect. The following title track (one of the ABBA Gold tracks), on the other hand, is 100% disco, and it is 100% awesome, whether because of the domineering chorus (with the little "uh huh!" backing parts), or because of the rolling guitar line and the ghostly keyboards, or because of the sharp delivery of the verse vocals around the pounding rhythm. Meanwhile, "If it Wasn't for the Nights" (cheerful and fun!) and "Lovers (Live a Little Longer)" (trashy and fun!) are also clearly 100% disco, whereas "Angeleyes" (released as a double-A-side with the title track) clearly has significant disco elements but sounds very retro in spots (Benny actually thought the band overdid the older elements to the point of making it a 60s-style relic, which I don't agree with). Basically, if you try to pin down the disco tracks on this album as all falling under a single mold, you'll fail, because that's just not how the band rolled at that point.

The non-disco tracks, then, are a bit of a mixed bag, though I definitely like them on the whole. The most famous of the lot was "Chiquitita," a supremely gentle ballad that ended up as one of the band's biggest hit (it was the lead single) despite (or perhaps because of) sounding completely unaware of contemporary pop music trends, and it's a fully-deserved classic. "I Have a Dream," on the other hand, is a track that threatens at times to become flat-out bad, especially when the children's choir emerges, yet manages to walk the line between "lovely" and "schlock" carefully enough to not fall fully into the latter, and while it's my least favorite on the album I don't exactly dislike it per se. Elsewhere, looking at the side-closers, "The King Has Lost His Crown" might be a little too pompous for not having that much going on, but I do enjoy the mean-spirited feel of it a bit (and how that spite is somehow captured in the keyboard tones), and the closing "Kisses of Fire," after not especially going anywhere in the more atmospheric verses (though there are some interesting production effects here and there), bursts forth in a very pleasing way in the chorus, and it's an acceptable way to round things out.

That leaves one other track, and you'd better believe "Does Your Mother Know" gets its own paragraph. This track is absolutely preposterous, from lyrics to vocal delivery to instrumental parts, delivered in the dorkiest manner imaginable, practically begging and daring the listener to hate, and dammit, I enjoy the hell out of it. I love the fact that Björn's vocal part was originally intended just as a demo guide-vocal, but that they left it in after realizing that it fit the song perfectly: this kind of sorta-disco, sorta-rockabilly, sorta-rock-and-roll shouldn't have a "serious" vocal part, it should have something that sounds a little out-of-place and ridiculous, and while I used to dislike how much of an earworm it was when it's so silly, the parts of me that have grown to enjoy things like "Temporary Secretary" eventually won out. Life is too short to dislike "Does Your Mother Know," and dammit, the scene from Johnny English where Mr. Bean accidentally plays a video of himself dancing to "Does Your Mother Know" is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

So anyway, this is far from ABBA's best, but it's once again a joyful blast of creativity and fun, and once again I can't help but recommend it enthusiastically. Even if the album was largely a mask for some really sad and rough things happening behind the scenes, it's an entertaining and fascinating mask that you need to hear unless you're still fighting the "Disco Sucks!" war from your trench in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

As the band was currently promoting Voulez-Vous, this concert draws heavily from there, including six album tracks (opening with a three-song wallop of the title track, "If It Wasn't for the Nights," and "As Good as New," and later bringing in "Chiquitita," "I Have a Dream" and "Does Your Mother Know") and the two amazing non-album singles ("Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" and "Summer Night City"). If somebody listens to that album and feels inclined to dismiss it because of the slickness, I would happily encourage them to listen to the versions here instead: I don't love the version of "I Have a Dream" here (mainly because the children's choir lays it on a little too sappy, even before considering the decision to reprise that part once the song is done), but the other performances from that album are hot and sweaty and immensely professional, and I find them delightful. Elsewhere, aside from the obligatory (and wonderful) encore of "Waterloo," the band wisely ignores the first albums, including three tracks from ABBA ("Rock Me," "SOS," and "Intermezzo No.1," which is an utter blast in this context), four from Arrival ("Knowing Me, Knowing You," "Money, Money, Money," "Why Did it Have to be Me?," and "Dancing Queen"), and five from The Album ("The Name of the Game," "Eagle," "Thank You for the Music," "Take a Chance on Me," and "Hole in Your Soul"), as well as a handful of well-chosen miscellaneous to round it out ("Fernando," an older track from an Anni-Frid solo album that was retconned into a popular ABBA song since Benny and Björn wrote it; "I'm Still Alive," a moving ballad that Agnetha and Björn wrote together featuring Agnetha on piano; and "The Way Old Friends Do," a surprisingly moving ballad that would appear on Super Trouper in this version). If there's a downside to the band's performances, it's that they're not especially charismatic in their between-song banter, yet at the same time I find the contrast between *timid talking to the audience* / *BURNING THE HOUSE DOWN DURING THE PERFORMANCE* oddly appealing in and of itself. The setlist has an excellent flow to it, interspersing gentler material with more anthemic and rocking material in a well-considered manner that transcends the actual song choices (such as putting "Does Your Mother Know" and "Hole in Your Soul" back-to-back near the end to rev up the crowd, then immediately following it with "The Way Old Friends Do").

Generally speaking, I wouldn't exactly rate this in the absolute top tier of my favorite live albums, but this definitely falls into whatever tier I'd slot immediately below that tier. In terms of living up to my ideals of what a live album should do, namely (a) providing a handful of alternate versions of tracks I already care for and that I could see myself in the mood to seek out instead of the originals, and (b) providing a way to perceive an act apart from the framing provided by the studio albums, this one is a success, and I would heartily recommend to anybody who likes ABBA and even to some people who think they don't.

PS: The funniest moment on the album, one that amuses me every time I hear it, is in "Money, Money, Money," where Benny throws a little bit of excess into one of his keyboard flourishes in one of the breaks before the chorus while the crowd absolutely eats it up, and Anni-Frid quips playfully "it's my song!!!" before they get to the chorus. I have no idea if this was staged or not but either way I enjoy the hell out of it.

As mentioned in the Voulez-Vous review, Agnetha and Björn announced their divorce during those recording sessions, and while the group put on a good face for the public for as long as they could, it was inevitable that the rough circumstances of their personal lives (especially in sorting out custody regarding children) was going to leak into their output at some point. This is not to say that the lead single (and a highlight both of ABBA Gold and the musical), "The Winner Takes it All," is strictly about the Agnetha/Björn divorce per se (even if the original title was "The Story of My Life"); both of them always stressed that nobody came out a winner in everything happened. At the same time, though, the emotional core of the track absolutely had its origins in the pain that came from the divorce, and this was a pain that could resonate both with Björn and with Agnetha, who absolutely sings the hell out of this (and in the process makes it seem like she could have written the words even though they were written by the person on the other side of her pain). The piano part is amazing too, and when everything is put together this song will absolutely rip your heart out if you're not prepared.

The other two ABBA Gold representatives from this album were also among the six singles from here, though only the title track was originally intended as such. For a long time I considered the title track a well-crafted pop song but not too much else, with the "soo-pah-pah, troo-pah-pah" backing vocals in the chorus as a nice touch that made it a little better, but over time I realized that I really enjoy the lyrics (about performing for thousands of people who love you but only feeling happy when your love is one of those in the crowd) and Anni-Frid's delivery, where she genuinely sounds happy and content in her life (*sigh*). As for "Lay Your Love on Me" (which was only released as a single after a remix became popular in dance clubs), there was a time when I maybe found the arrangement slick in a slightly gross way, but I would never dream of that now: this isn't just a slick disco anthem, it's a slick disco hymn, and that rush of intensity during the build into each chorus, followed by the endorphin release of the chorus, is something I look forward to every time in this song and this album.

That leaves seven tracks, and while I don't love all of them ("Happy New Year" has always struck me as a bit of a sappy slog), there are enough absolute winners here to make me rate this album highly. "Andante, Andante" always feels to me like it should be something like a lesser sequel to "Chiquitita," but then I actually listen to it, and every time I'm won over by the sparse guitar arrangement and the gentle Anni-Frid delivery, and it's definitely a highlight. Perhaps the biggest issue I end up having with the song has nothing to do with the song itself, but instead has to do with the fascinating and totally unconventional songs that immediately bookend it and make it perhaps sound out of place. "On and On and On" has long felt to me like a song that is practically begging the cynical reviewer to dismiss it as a mindless pounding dance number (as I did for years), but it is just so infectious, and the lyrics are so funny (especially the line about shaking her hair), that I end up enjoying the hell out of it every time. And "Me and I," well, that's one where I could see somebody arguing me into calling it the best song on the album if "The Winner Takes it All" and "Lay Your Love on Me" didn't have my heart. The synth arrangement on this one is spectacular, and I love the vocal arrangement on this one; the way they come in with "Oh no, oh no," the ascension into "Hyde" in the line "Yes, I am to myself what Jekyll must have been to Hyde," and the use of vocoder in the line "Everyone's a freak" all reminds me a lot of the band pouring more hooks than necessary into "Knowing Me, Knowing You" just because they could. And goodness me what a chorus.

The second side starts on a dull note with "Happy New Year," while hitting a towering peak with "Lay Your Love on Me," and the other three tracks fall solidly on the good side of the ledger for me. "Our Last Summer" is another great Anni-Frid vehicle, a song about a young love and care-free trips to Paris growing into a mature love when life is now dull (*SIGH*), and while it was almost certainly added to the album to provide some more emotional levity to counter-balance tension in the studio, the events that would soon take place make this beautiful ballad incredibly sad to me. In complete contrast to this is "The Piper," an alternately melancholy and upbeat folk-inspired melody with various arrangement trappings to add a medieval flavor (over a low-key synth floor) as the women sing about people getting led away by deceptive figures, and it's yet another excellent song that sounds nothing like what somebody would typically expect ABBA to sound like. And finally, the album closes with the performance of "The Way Old Friends Do" taken from their 1979 Wembley shows (and found in the live album released in 2014), and while I'm not necessarily sure how great of a song this might be on its own, as a closer it's an emotional wallop, especially when the men come in and it somehow sounds like there's five times as many of them singing as there actually are.

As I alluded to earlier, I could understand somebody not liking this as much as the band's best 70s albums, as I largely fell into this category for a long time, but I would also suggest that, when you get to know the band's albums well, and in particular when you get to know their albums well in the context of the order in which they came out, this is one that almost can't help but eventually stand out. ABBA was always well-positioned to make an effective transition into the 80s, but it's still remarkable to me that they made the transition this effectively. As with the other albums in this stretch, this is a must own for somebody who likes the band.

While The Visitors sold well by the standards of a typical act (it hit number one in several countries in Europe), it struggled by the standards of ABBA (it did surprisingly poorly in countries like France and Australia, where the band had largely dominated over the previous half-dozen years), and while this could have pointed to a growing fatigue with ABBA generally, it's also likely this had to do with the nature of The Visitors specifically. As one might reasonably expect given the circumstances, this is not a fun album, and for a band whose public persona had largely been cultivated around a lighthearted and playful vibe (whether this was justified is an entirely different matter), this would have been somewhat offputting. Beyond the change in vibe, though, the sound of this album makes it clear that Benny and Björn intended to stay on the cutting edge (continuing many of the developments from Super Trouper), and there's a grander, darker, and colder vibe to much of the material than what they had done before (some of this may also have to do with the band using a digital recorder rather than the analog they had used previously). In short, this album sounds like ABBA in broad strokes, but it also sounds rather unlike ABBA in many ways, and I could easily see somebody treating this as an uncomfortable addendum to their career rather than as something core and essential.

Well, I'm super fond of it, even if it took me a while to come around all the way on it. I find it interesting that this album only contributed one track to ABBA Gold, and I also find it interesting that, for years, this was one of the tracks that I somewhat tended to forget about, but you know what, I really like "One of Us," even if their manager didn't like the idea of releasing it as a single. The sorta light reggae arrangement always throws me off a little bit, but I've come to accept it, and the melancholy (yet spritely, not dreary) feel of the track, with lyrics about being just out of a relationship and not feeling great about it, makes it into a fascinating entry point to the album for somebody otherwise not familiar with it.

What really drives home the notion that this is an album without clearly obvious entry points is a look at the other tracks that band chose to release as singles, all of which give less of a feel of "we think this will be a massive hit" and more of "look, these are excellent tracks, and whether or not they're commercial successes we think they represent the album well." The final single was the opening title track, and it is a futuristic stunner, a six-minute Cold War mini-epic with an Anni-Frid vocal that makes no attempt to sound commercial in a traditional sense (but is haunting and atmospheric as anything can be), a rigid and paranoid chorus that exemplifies so many of the best aspects of early 80s synth pop, and some of the best keyboard sounds Benny ever produced. I don't know the general mindset of the hardcore ABBA fan community especially well, but I do know that, in the somewhat limited circles of people I know who have strong opinions on ABBA deep cuts, "The Visitors" tends to rank very highly, and like "Eagle" or "I'm a Marionette" it's one of those tracks that really drives home the point that you have to hear ABBA's actual albums.

Another classic that got released as a single, not so much because it made sense as a single as because it was a classic, was "When All is Said and Done," which Björn wrote with the Benny/Anni-Frid split in mind and which Anni-Frid made into a white-hot ball of mid-life crisis relationship ennui on par with something like the solo Pete Townshend song "Slit Skirts" from a year later. Anni-Frid's vocals are spectacular, as are the harmony vocals from Agnetha, and there's a production effect with a low-pitched synth swell around the 1:55 mark that could stay in my head forever if it wanted to. Naturally, of course, it got completely misused in the musical (it shouldn't be used as a happy crowdpleaser!!!!!), and Pierce Brosnan's attempts to sing it make me angry every time I think it.

The first side is rounded out by the remaining single release (as a double A-side with "The Visitors), "Head Over Heels" (which starts with a fascinating guitar sound that reminds me of the start of "Ashes to Ashes" and has a weird melody with lots of chromaticism that I totally enjoy), and the bleak-as-hell "Soldiers," which boasts a fascinating arrangement from top (the guitars and the synths) to bottom (the bass and drums work is ridiculously hypnotic), and whose combination of these elements with lyrics alluding to impending nuclear war and a ridiculously memorable chorus would have probably made this into an underground deep cut indie snob classic if it hadn't been made by ABBA. The second side, then, aside from the "One of Us" single, is a bunch of tracks that, even more than the first side, exemplify the idea that this album isn't so much made for casual ABBA fans as it is for hardcores, and that's ok. The one track that I think feels in keeping with ABBA's career to this point is actually the one Björn sings, in that it once again allows him to tap into his persona as kind of a creepy dude. "Two for the Price of One" is a track that one could easily dismiss as a novelty (it's about a guy who answers a newspaper ad for a MFF threesome, and is surprised to discover that the FF pair is a woman and her mother), but interestingly enough, this is one of my wife's favorite ABBA songs, and I'm largely on board with the reasoning: in an album full of sad, downbeat material, this track, for its superficially silly lyrical subject (and surprisingly intricate vocal arrangement in the chorus), stays consistent with the mood by showing that both people who answer personal ads and people who place them are often deeply sad on some level, and this track is much more haunting than it could be.

Earlier in the side comes "I Let the Music Speak," which I'm still not entirely sure should be over five minutes in length (I don't love the martial parts even if they're ok), but is still a lovely number where the vocal part often almost sounds like it's swimming through the arrangement, and I'm glad it's here. Later in the side (right after "Two for the Price of One") comes "Slipping Through My Fingers," a tearjerking synth ballad about seeing your child grow up and having regrets about not spending enough time with them, and when I listen to this I can't help but feel like this the kind of song Justin Hayward would have killed to have written and performed on his later solo albums (right down to the guitar solo near the end sounding uncannily similar to later Hayward). And finally, "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room" might not necessarily have been intended as the final track on what would be their final album for a very long time, but it's the kind of track that both works best as a closer and that strongly suggests that continuing might not be the best idea: whereas so much of ABBA's career to this point had sounded like a big happy party, this one, largely because of the ticking clock and music box sounds, gives the sense of a lonely child sitting in their room after everyone they really care about has left. There was apparently an initial intention to make this into a big anthem a la "Lay All Your Love on Me," but that would have been a terrible mistake: this is a song of contemplation, not of celebration, and it perfectly matches the low light and uncertain mood of the album cover.

I'm not necessarily sure what I would consider the ideal purchasing order for ABBA's best six albums (for instance, I think chronologically would be as good as any and maybe better), but in any acceptable purchasing order I'd almost certainly slot this as last. This is not because of the quality of the album, not by any means, but because it's one of those albums where, unless you understand how the group got to this point, you might not be able to fully grasp why it has to sound the way it does and why it sounds so very different from the group's reputation. Still, even if this is an album you don't get around to hearing right away, it's an album you eventually have to hear unless you very specifically dislike ABBA, because even when they were falling apart and didn't really want to sound like they used to, they were so talented that they couldn't help but deliver something this impressive.

The story is fairly opaque and convoluted, and I have to confess that it took me a number of listens and reads of both the summary and the lyrics in the liner notes to piece it together (and even now, when I know this pretty well, I can't always remember immediately which character is singing at a given point). The following is a summary (hitting most pertinent details): two chess grandmasters, a Russian and an American (we're not given their names), are placed into a match against the other (the initial match is in Merano, Italy) in what is essentially a proxy contest to determine which of their respective home nations is better (even if they don't themselves don't like the idea of taking on this role). Various expressions of flamboyant behavior on the part of the American (whose playing approach is considered insanity to even the closest observer) leads to tensions arising not only between the Russian and American, but also between the American and his "second," a woman named Florence who was born in (communist) Hungary and came to Britain at age 2, and essentially functions as the American's caretaker / mother even as he treats her like crap. After the match in Merano initially collapses, various circumstances lead to Florence and the Russian meeting in a restaurant and instantly falling for each other. Florence resigns from her position to be with the (married) Russian, who has won the match, and he seeks asylum as a Russian refugee.

A year later, the Russian is in Bangkok, Thailand for a match with a new challenger from the USSR, and the American shows up despite not having played any chess recently. The Russian agrees to an interview with a local TV station but is surprised when his interviewer is the American, who spends the whole time asking the Russian about his wife (Svetlana), about Florence, and about politics, finishing the interview by telling the Russian that Svetlana is flying into town. This sets off a fight between Florence and the Russian, who tells Florence that he has to temporarily leave her in order to concentrate on the rest of the competition. After the Russian has some initial success in the match, the American attempts to blackmail the Russian by asking the Russian to throw the match in exchange for the American not telling Florence unfortunate information he's learned about her father (short version, he was a traitor). The Russian refuses, at which point the American approaches Florence and tells her that if she rejoins him, he can give her information (the bad information, mind you) about her past. She also refuses him, leaving the American very upset. The Russian, reinvigorated by his anger, proceeds to destroy his opponent in the rest of the match, but in the process he alienates both Florence and Svetlana, and he is left broken as he realizes that all he has left is chess. The American, who now has a similar but different problem (he can't think about chess at all but instead thinks only of his loneliness) plots revenge on both Florence and the Russian, and the musical ends with Florence and the Russian each musing that they thought their story was a happy one but instead it was one where most possible variations would have resulted in a similar stalemate. The End.

So that's the story, but what of the music? The music is wonderful, and what really fascinates me is that this works both as a "regular" musical and as a musical done by the guys from ABBA. This album has a couple of absolutely massive hit singles that 100% sound like songs that, in a different context, would have worked on most ABBA albums: "One Night in Bangkok" is a flat-out banger with an incredible earworm of a chorus (the line "one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble" was originally a placeholder line from Björn but Rice kept it because he was astounded by how good it was), and "I Know Him So Well," a ballad sung by Elaine Page and Barbara Dickson (in a duet between the characters of Florence and Svetlana), had a chorus based off an Agnetha-sung number called "I Am an A" that the band did in its 1977 shows. Much of the material, though, is more sprawling in a traditional musical sense, yet it doesn't feel at all like Benny/Björn are out of their element, which makes sense given how much of their approach with ABBA itself was influenced by the world of musicals in the first place.

Covering all of the individual tracks would be excessive, but in terms of highlights, I would want to draw attention to a small handful. The emotional climaxes of the show, not surprisingly, come from the moments when the Russian/Florence coupling begins and ultimately disintegrates, in "Mountain Duet" and "Epilogue: You and I," and even before I fully understood what the hell was going on, the line "But we go on pretending / stories like ours / have happy endings" consistently had me deep in my feelings every time I heard it. A couple of other sung parts that I consistently love are in "Argument," when Florence is upset with the Russian that their dirty laundry is now public ("I would have thought in the average affair / that the first hint of trouble would be / oh so small; barely perceptible, easy to miss / WHY IS OURS ON TV??!!"), and especially in "Pity the Child," where the American gives a glimpse into the troubled upbringing that led to him finding refuge in chess ("Pity the child who knew his parents / saw their faults / saw their love die before his eyes / Pity the child that wise / he never asked 'did I cause your distress?' / just in case they said yes"). In the instrumental passages, well, the title track is itself an instrumental, a delayed overture of sorts that functions as a soundtrack to the first game between the American and the Russian, and it's a fascinating bit of atmosphere that serves as yet another reminder that Benny/Björn (especially by the end) were capable of creating interesting soundscapes independent of any vocals.

As much as my gut reaction is to absolutely love this album, I don't want to go too high in the rating: this is not as tight of a listen as, say, Tommy or Quadrophenia, or as gripping of a full-on WTF presentation of a story as Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds, and the fact that it took me so long to get a feel for the album beyond an overall general positive impression does matter a bit to me. Regardless, these are just nitpicks, and if somebody likes ABBA (especially the last couple of albums) and rejects this just because they don't like musicals, then they're only hurting themselves.