Album [Import Bonus Track] [Remaster] (CD - 1978)

Additional personnel: Lasse Wellander, Janne Schaffer (guitar); Lars O. Carlsson (flute, saxophone); Rutger Gunnarsson (bass); Ola Bunkert, Roger Palm (drums); Malando Gassama (persussion).

Recorded at Glen, Metronome and Marcus Studios, Stockholm, Sweden in 1977. Includes reissue liner notes by Carl Magnus Palm.

Digitally remastered using 24-bit technology by Jon Astley.

Personnel: Björn Ulvaeus (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar); Benny Andersson (vocals, keyboards); Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad (vocals); Janne Schaffer (guitar, electric guitar); Lasse Wellander (guitar); Lars Carlsson (flute, saxophone); Roger Palm, Ola Brunkert (drums); Malando Gassama (percussion).

Audio Remasterers: Jon Astley; Michael B. Tretow.

Photographers: Lars-Erik Larsson; Bengt H. Malmqvist; Barry Levine.

Arrangers: Benny Andersson; Björn Ulvaeus.

Not quite the soundtrack to the Swedish foursome's film debut, ABBA: The Movie (directed by respected Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallestrom), THE ALBUM combines several songs from the movie, including the deliriously bouncy hit "Take A Chance On Me" and the dramatic "The Name of the Game," with three songs from Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson's never-completed musical The Girl with the Golden Hair.

These three songs are among the band's most intriguing, with "Thank You for the Music" serving as the band's unofficial theme song and "I Wonder (Departure)" one of their most affecting ballads. It's the near-violent, bitterly ironic "I'm A Marionette" that's the wild card. Easily the angriest song ABBA ever recorded, "I'm A Marionette" sounds in retrospect like a portent of the band's rancorous end less than four years later. Curiosities and all, THE ALBUM may be ABBA's creative highpoint.

ABBA's fifth album was a marked step forward for the group, having evolved out of Europop music into a world-class rock act over their previous two albums, they now proceeded to absorb and assimilate some of the influences around them, particularly the laid-back California sound of Fleetwood Mac (curiously, like ABBA, then a band with two couples at its center), as well as some of the attributes of progressive rock. That they did this without compromising their essential virtues as a pop ensemble makes this album seem even more extraordinary, though at the time nobody bothered to analyze it -- The Album was simply an incredibly popular release, yielding two British number one singles in "The Name of the Game" and "Take a Chance on Me" (which made the Top Five in America, their second-best showing after "Dancing Queen"), and achieving the quartet's highest-ever showing on the U.S. LP charts, reaching the Top 20 and selling a million copies in six months. The opening number, "Eagle," dominated by synthesizers and soaring larger-than-life vocal flourishes, is followed by the more lyrical "Take a Chance on Me," with its luminous a cappella opening. The whole album is like that, effortlessly straddling hard rock, pop/rock, dance-rock, and progressive rock -- though the hits tend to stand out in highest relief, there are superb album tracks here, including the driving, lushly harmonized "Move On" and "Hole in Your Soul," which provides guitarist Lasse Wellander with a beautiful showcase for his lead electric playing. The second side of the album is dominated by material from a "mini-musical" called Girl with the Golden Hair that Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus wrote for the concerts on their just-ended tour intended to be used in a dramatically coherent storytelling context. Two of its songs, "Thank You for the Music" and "I Wonder (Devotion)," are less exciting than the straight rock material found elsewhere on the album, though the former became a popular concert number for the quartet, while the latter is the kind of lushly melodic, moodily reflective song that could easily have graced a Barbra Streisand album of the era. The closer, "I'm a Marionette," however, is a startlingly bold attempt to recast the influence of Kurt Weill in a hard rock mode, ending The Album on a high note, musically and artistically. [The Album was reissued in October 2001 in a gatefold format in remastered 24-bit digital audio, which reveals extraordinary detail and richness in every track, and with one delightful bonus cut, Agnetha Fältskog's beguiling Doris Day-style interpretation of "Thank You for the Music."] ~ Bruce Eder & William Ruhlmann minimize