The Visitors

by

ABBA

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As most would agree, ABBA's final released album of original material in 1981 was greeted with mixed response, let alone this 8 year old at the time! Many years later, and with more adult insight I fully appreciate the sombre and autobiographical brilliance of this oeuvre. Increasingly autobiographical and documenting a widening rift between the band through rhyme (the album cover alone indicates their division and the bleakness of the recording), yet this CD stands victorious trial against music critics and fans alike, containing soaring and brilliant melodies (listen to the grumbling choris of the title track and the snappy Soldiers chorus), awesome harmonies (Agnetha's falsettoes in I Let The Music Speak and the 2-part chorus harmony to Two For The Price of One). Lyrically this is an introspective album covering healing from separation (One of Us, When All Is Said ''here's to us, one more toast''), the torments of mental anguish (The Visitors), war (Soldiers), growing children (the gorgeous Slipping Through My Fingers), and so on and so forth. Frida and Agnetha are also given individual vocal reigns on each song (no songs have them singing verses in harmony) and most importantly, Frida is able to shine as perhaps the most accomplished of the two vocalists. I find it hard to summarise the cd...there's so much complexity to the lyrics, the musical structures (listen for example to Two for the Price moving from simple male lead verse to twin part backing harmonies and army-band type ending). Despite criticism for being overtly commerical this Opus indicates ABBA as accomplished and mature artistes who are capable of writing deeper lyrics and musical structure while maintaining a commercial appeal. Haunting, tragic and brilliant.

Having owned all of the main ABBA albums on Atlantic vinyl for some years, I find these latest remasters to be very poor sonic representations of the original releases. The principal offense in this regard has been the indiscriminate use of digital compression by the attending audio engineers, resulting in a sound which is louder and punchier overall, but with a tremendous loss of dynamic range and increased distortion, especially at higher volume. This is just dandy if you plan on listening in your car, on your tiny boombox, or through an Ipod, but the limitations of this technique for "enhancing" sound will be immediately evident upon even the most casual listening through any marginally decent HiFi system.

The original Polydor issues of all these albums (still available used on Amazon and that auction site) in fact have substantially better audio quality, assuming, that is, that you take the expression "better audio quality" to imply such pesky things as a conspicuously enlarged stereo image, greater acoustic separation and dynamic range, and a lack of distortion at higher volume. While a bit more difficult to come by than the 2001 and 2005 remasters, the original Polydors (UK and West German) are all reported to be flat transfers from the original LP masters; as such, the dynamic range is completely intact, and no noise reduction has been used. For me, this is the ideal way to listen to ABBA in the digital format.

If, however, you would really like to hear what all the fuss is about ABBA, just get yourself a modest turntable and pick up some of the original vinyl pressings on that auction site or at your local flea market/thrift shop. I assure you that, having done so, you will cease to consider altogether the question of which of the latest newfangled digital ABBA remasters to get.