I saw myself as a concealed attraction

Starting my trip back through the 1981 album charts.

27/12/81 : The Visitors - ABBA

Our fifth visit with ABBA (and they're a special case because we've already had TWO best-ofs from them) and I have listened to this before, but not in many a year so I'll be happy to remind myself of it.

The opening title track is an odd one because it's very synthesiser-y and lyrically inaccessible (for an ABBA track, at least). And the whole album has a much more downbeat feel than I assume many were expecting with a lot less frothiness than usual - obviously their personal circumstances contributed to this. They still come out with some top tracks here though, with "One Of Us" (with some brutal lyrics), "Slipping Through My Fingers" and "When All Is Said Is Done" being my favourites - I don't think too many people would describe the rest of the tracks as top-drawer ABBA, but I feel the album as a whole works quite well.

We're at #1 in the charts this week on their third week of a 21 week run, with it having spent its first three weeks at #1 - it reappeared for a single week in '12. The rest of the top five were the Queen best-of (on its ninth week out of a current 1225 week total), Human League, Chart Hits '81 and Adam & The Ants and because it's New Year, there are no new entries.

Wikipedia tells us this is their eighth album and, for four decades it was their last, until Voyage came along. It was, however, one of the first albums to be digitally recorded and mixed and also one of the first to be available on CD. It was recorded at a time of tension within the group with Bjorn and Agnetha having already divorced and Benny and Anni-Frid going through the process - Bjorn remarked about the recording sessions that "it could be frosty sometimes", which seems some fine Scandi-understatement to me. 

The only other fact of interest in there is that the album cover photo was shot in Swedish artist Julius Kronberg's studio and you might notice that the band members aren't standing quite as closely as they do on other album covers. Critically, the reviews were positive enough, with The Arts Desk getting it about right for me saying it "is not their best, but it is their most interesting" and commercially, it got to #1 in quite a few European countries (including Sweden - who knew?) and it sold 1.2 million copies here but it only got to #29 in the US (interestingly, Voyage is their only album to make the top ten over there, getting to #2).

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a version of this for three quid and the most you can spend on an original copy is £30, but if you want to splash out more you can throw £50 at a half-speed remastered version (apparently this is a good thing) or £161.49 at the deluxe boxset from '12 which includes a vinyl, CD and DVD version. I don't think I'm quite tempted to go that far, but I enjoyed this revisit of an interesting album - although I suspect I won't be rushing back to it any time soon.

1971 - Over and out