A to Z
ABBA
Abba: The Studio Albums UNIVERSAL
8/10
What s your favourite colour? The full works in a box
For those yet to invest in ABBA’s catalogue, perhaps it’s time for a colour-coded vinyl boxset. These eight studio long players are neatly divided along those lines in this box set, but it’s hard to tell if the range of hues has any rhyme or reason to it judging by the contents. So we can but speculate: 1973’s Ring Ring is red, perhaps a warning that its peaks – including the title track – still weren’t enough for Eurovision, and 1974’s Waterloo is orange, signalling, like its title track, that they were now ready for departure, if not willing to drop embarrassing novelty tunes like “King Kong Song”. 1975’s ABBA is silver, with “Mamma Mia” and “SOS” eyeing the prize, “Hey, Hey, Helen” revealing unfortunate anti-feminist conservatism, and “Man In The Middle” implying a 17-year-old dating a 50-year-old is gold-digging. 1976’s Arrival – home to “Dancing Queen” and “Knowing Me, Knowing You” – is white and almost pristine, though “When I Kissed The Teacher” is everything one might fear from that title. The work of a now-unstoppable force, 1977’s The Album is green, its “Thank You For The Music” a self-congratulatory orgy as sentimental as “Eagle” and irresistible as “Take A Chance On Me”. 1979’s Voulez-Vous is blue, acknowledging Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog’s divorce, though disco highlights “Voulez-Vous” and “Summer Night City” won’t distract 21st century ears from the wince-inducing sentiments of “Does Your Mother Know?”’s further underage flirtation. Then 1980’s Super Trouper is reborn in gold – though Arrival sold more – quite justifiably if only because of “The Winner Takes It All”. And 1981’s The Visitors? With Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad now separated, it’s intriguingly darker, musically and lyrically, but in this incarnation it’s yellow. Maybe, like the album, that’s all they had left.
Extras: None. WYNDHAM WALLACE
BELFAST GYPSIES
Them Belfast Gypsies GRAPEFRUIT
7/10
Long-lost relic by “the Other Them”
When members of Van Morrison’s Them broke away to form a rival group, a battle
