A mainstay of popular arts criticism is that the subject must, in some deep way, pertain to some universal sense of veracity. It must be, as they say, "truth".
In this respect therefore, ABBA's 'Arrival' totally and utterly fails. The album title its self is a lie. This is not the Arrival of ABBA, they'd already had several albums by now, including a greatest hits, and at least two runs at the Eurovision song contest. In fact the real 'arrival' arrived not with Arrival but rather three years earlier with 'Ring Ring', and half of ABBA arrived ages ago anyway because they'd had successful musical careers elsewhere.
Likewise, it's certainly listenable, but it is truth? The first track details a licentious affair between a young female pupil and her teacher, but something about this track seems hollow- where as when listening to Sting singing 'Don't Stand To Close To Me' I can actually imagine him roughly rogering the wet schoolgirl, here, the narrative seems to reveal little, possessed of as much credibility as as bored adolescent fantasy. 'Dancing Queen' has a similar problem- The title and lyrics talk about a Queen in the singular, however the lead vocals are shared by Anni-Frid and the much better Agnetha. Clearly therefore there really should be Dancing Queens in the plural, the band getting so swept up in their (immaculately produced and recorded) web of lies that their very own identities have begun to deliquesce. In fact, the only track that does ring true is the sixth, 'Money, Money, Money', a crass and cynical pean to consumerism that prefigured a generation of raving Thatcherite lunatics and the more or less total collapse of society.
5 stars.
