ABBA
Waterloo (reissue, 1974)
POLAR MUSIC INTERNATIONAL
6/10
Plenty of promise, but the Swedes’ second album is patchy at best
When Abba arrived on stage for the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, it changed the quartet’s lives, but it couldn’t change their second album, already out in their native Sweden (and now half-speed mastered). Fifty years later, its weakest points sound even weaker, notably “King Kong Song”’s novelty glam and stalker anthem “Watch Out”, not to mention “What About Livingstone”’s saccharine schlager and “Hasta Manana”, which predicts Brotherhood Of Man’s “Save All Your Kisses For Me”, if rewritten for Vera Lynn. Fortunately, if “Honey Honey” is a little too sweet, the title track remains thrilling, and the deliciously understated “My Mama Said” hints at disco to come, while “Suzy-Hang-Around” is a surprisingly baroque slice of harpsichord pop and “Dance (While The Music Still Goes On)” brings out the men’s inner BeeGee.
Extras 7/10: Coloured vinyl singles boxset and 10” single of “Waterloo” in four languages.
WYNDHAM WALLACE
DAVID BOWIE
Waiting In The Sky
PARLOPHONE
7/10
Record Store Day release of an alternative Ziggy, on half-speed-cut vinyl
Towards the middle of December 1971, David Bowie had spent a month in Trident and emerged with what he thought could be the follow-up to Hunky Dory. After finalising the tracklist he sent the tapes to the label and – in this alternative timeline – they agreed to put it out. This is a universe in which Waiting In The Sky is released instead of Ziggy Stardust, which means no “Suffragette City”, “Starman” or “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”, all three of which were written after RCA suggested Bowie come up with extra songs. The alternative Ziggy instead includes “Round And Round”, “Amsterdam”, “Holy Holy” and “Velvet Goldmine”, and for all the merits of those four songs, it goes without saying that it is an inferior record to the one Bowie eventually released in summer 1972. An interesting academic exercise that shows occasionally record labels do know what they are talking about.
PETER WATTS
ANNE BRIGGS
Anne Briggs (reissue, 1971)
TOPIC
9/10
Vinyl reissue from toweringly influential folk legend,
