ABBA's Pet Sounds?

No not really, but close.... 1981 "The Visitors" was as just as drastic a departure from 1980's "Super Trouper" as Brian Wilson's classic 1966 "Pet Sounds" was from "Beach Boys Party!".



I bought this album new in 1981 and I was surprised how somber and serious it was. I was expecting a fun upbeat Pop album, but here were songs about the end of relationships, the fear of a Russian invasion during the cold war, children growing too-quickly, and the final disillusionment of childhood/adolescent dreams into adulthood. Not something you'd expect from a group that gave us "Sitting in The Palmtree" "King Kong Song" and "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" 5-6 years before. ABBA had grown up.



Despite the upbeat melodies and sing-along choruses the whole album has a sense of impending doom about it - Perhaps it's the all-digital production with the increased use of drum machines and synthesizer programming that creates the chilly sonic atmosphere. There's a couple of fun songs like "Two For The Price Of One" (which made me gag back then - but I now find charming) but the optimistic "bouncy" energy of ABBA's earlier albums is gone.



But Benny & Bjorn didn't lose their touch for writing memorable songs and crafting big and beautiful productions. The whole album just sucks me in - the track listing isn't as haphazard as earlier ABBA albums, it seems to flow just right.



ABBA started make a album after this called "Opus X" (their 10th album) and recorded a few tracks for it like the great "Just Like That" (a edited version made the "Thank You" box set but us fans want the full version with all the verses) and "In the City" (which made ABBA Gold Volume 2) but personal differences broke up the foursome for good. Had ABBA stayed together, could they have made a album that would have changed jaded rock critics and "serious" music fans minds that thought ABBA was just a "bubblegum" group? ...Well we will never know! But we have this great send off to the best overseas Pop group of the 70's and early 80's.

The End of the Road

Well, in 1981, you probably would have been surprised that ABBA still wanted to work together after Benny and Frida's divorce, too. After all, ABBA was a group that formed on the basis of love and friendship. Granted, despite the conflicts between the two former couples in the past, all four were still good friends, as they had continuously pointed out in interviews at the time. But maybe that special bonding that once held Benny & Frida and Bjorn & Agnetha did actually mean something more, as THE VISITORS illustrates. THE VISITORS feels more like the work of four individuals pasted together than the work of a group- Agnetha and Frida hardly sing together, Bjorn's lyrics are more personal than ever, and Benny's musicianship sounds more indebted to the sounds of the times than the sounds of ABBA (more new wave allusions, fewer Europop beats).



But what really makes THE VISITORS seem cold is its overall feel, as Bjorn decided to tackle personal subjects like dissidents in the Soviet Union (the title track), the Cold War ("Soldiers"), his- and Benny's- inclinations towards creating a play ("I Let the Music Speak"), watching his children growing up ("Slipping Through My Fingers"), and- surprise!- breakups ("One of Us," "When All Is Said and Done"). These particular songs, from their slick synthesized productions to the lyrics themselves, may not sound extremely cold and bleak- after all, this is still Europop- but their sound dominates the album so that it feels like every song is also cold and bleak, even though that's not the case. But those exceptions sound oddly out of place- "Head Over Heels," for instance, sounds like it could have worked as a silly song, but here, it's confusing whether the narrator is praising or scorning the extreme, pace-setting lady she is talking about; the slight personal ad story in "Two For the Price of One" has nothing to do with the rest of the album. Yet those complaints will ultimately fall to the wayside for many ABBA listeners, since ABBA's albums were always more a construction of individual pieces than an album tied under a certain theme.



Especially since ABBA still have some really good songs here, particularly on the album's first side- the paranoid title track, the straight-faced "Head Over Heels" (yes, it's still a well-constructed song!), the somber "When All Is Said and Done," and the eerie "Soldiers." But with the notable exception of "One of Us," the best song here, the second side is primarily a mess- the other four songs are well-produced, but none of them really have any firm hooks to be memorable, primarily because they feel like songs sung from the heart, with little concern for melody. And when listening to these four songs in particular, it becomes clear that ABBA could not have performed in this setting much longer, since none of those songs feel like group ensembles. That said, THE VISITORS is still a solid artifact of its time, and the first side is bound to lure listeners into playing this more than once or twice. It's just not what came before.

The Visitorrs: a bit less sugar-sweet, still undeniably ABBA

As most other reviewers have noted, this album is surely something very different for ABBA; it was obvious to me on the first listen (in those days of LP records, on "the first spin"). The Visitors, is indeed, a more mature album than anything that came before---although ABBA's lyrics were often far more accomplished than they were given credit for (Knowing Me, Knowing You; Fernando; One Man, One Woman, I'm A Marionette... none of them obscure, shocking or literary, but undeniably solid, adult pop lyrics). Still, with a new consistency, the songs on The Visitors clearly aim for, and usually strike, adult nerves. Ruminations on the power of music, the Cold War, raising kids, personal break-ups.. all very well done, the glaring exceptions being "Two For The Price Of One" which is at best, a trifle, both lyrically and melodically. "When All Is Said & Done" has a truly fine, insightful lyric, notwithstanding the rather gratuitous inclusion of the word "sex", which seems in retrospect a quaint but obvious move, part of the "adult" mood they were aiming for. Each song has something to say, and says it well.



The sounds, too, are somewhat different---though not unreservedly for the better. Like the lyrics, the melodies are often more subtle and complex than what ABBA were usually known for (too often described as "hook-filled" and "sing-song"). So here we get more melodic & rhythmic subtlety, but sometimes at the expense of that uncanny, positively joyful musical energy that seemed to inform every typical ABBA smash hit, from Waterloo to Dancing Queen to Super Trouper. One wants to love this album, like a last conversation with an old friend, but there's no denying that "Head Over Heels" or "Soldiers" simply do not make one want to jump up and shout the way their predecessors did. These melodies are by no means UNmelodic, or even less than VERY catchy. It's more fair to say that if their earlier songscapes were painted in bright, primary colors, Bjorn & Benny were now utilizing other, more subtle shadings.



The arrangements, are as always, rich, interesting and distinctive. Frida's and Agnetha's performances, consistent with everything else on the album, are more adult, personal and individual ---a far cry from the early days when it was often said that they sing in such perfect harmony, "you can hardly tell them apart".



The final verdict? Taken on its own terms, The Visitors is quite impressive. It's a more complex listen than their other stuff, both lyrically and melodically, and it highlights the impressive extent of ABBA's evolution over the scarcely ten years that we knew them (and this is not to diminish the wonder of their earlier work). Equally important, for all the talk of more serious moods, Bjorn & Benny STILL had a way with a song, to drastically understate it. It's not like they did an album of minimalist jazz, or a suite of atonal gregorian chants. This is still ABBA music, and practically nobody in the pop world can do it like them: melodies you remember forever, flawless singing, intricate arrangements, accessible, yet meaningful lyrics. A fine, final album from a group whose music was always far more adult and technically accomplished than they're ever likely to be given credit for--even (or especially) with their newly hip "rehabilitated" status. Perhaps the final word on ABBA should be, Just because they wrote songs that were wonderfully catchy doesn't mean they didn't write great music. The Visitors underscores that.