Agnetha Fältskog - Dance Your Pain Away (2013)

Create an illusion, cause some confusion

Lock your tears inside and show some pride

Turns out that Agnetha really did have one more ace to play, which might explain the significance of calling her forthcoming album A, but in particular I am talking about her new offering Dance The Pain Away. Wasting no time (having not released original material in over 25 years), after the swanky scuttle of what is known in the music industry as a drum beat, we are quickly thrust into a nervous overload of overflowing disco fantasia. With a swift momentum of sweeping strings and a dollop of 'been there, done that, got the royalties' panache that only an old timer who was there first time around can convey, her passionate diligence escalates into a dizzying whirl of sharp lyrical discretion, disillusioned rejoice, stoic defense strategics and flat-out plaintive 'legs to the ceiling' rapture.

In a long line of cubicle betrayals, number 1 priority is to dance. "You caught him in the rest room ... with another one" could very well be the shadiest powder-room antics since Sophie Amogbokpa got protective over a bowl of lollipops. With a drizzle of disco deposits smeared all over the joint, Dance The Pain Away is about flushing it all out your system and coming out of it smelling of roses, all the while spectators of the show are expecting your very worst. A-ha! Agnetha doesn't seem to think so.

The lift-off from the chorus is a solo-career best. If unsure whether to laugh or cry, "let there be rumours, pay no attention" pushes the singer to the limits of her integrity. Not since Dusty Springfield's Village People-esque Reputation have vicious whispers been so decadently dismissed in such rich musical surroundings. Going full-pelt, "nothing, he got nothing, he got nothing on you" rains down from the heavens, simultaneously echoing a familiarly shimmying guitar riff from Does Your Mother Know (lightly salting the occasional with a welcome bite of irony). Lyrically concise, depicting being cheated on as a mere cardiovascular/choreography challenge works for me, whether it is dancing as desperation or dancing as survival, there doesn't have to be a difference. The rhythmic shifts are exhilarating, including some exquisite piano work (particularly just before the song hits its final stride), merging disco and discord with glorious, heartfelt aplomb. 

The voice is still magic: delicate and no less compelling, a gaggle of backing vocalists do some heavy lifting at the end, but your feet won't even be touching the parquet floor by then. The initial wariness and fragility of the singing has subsided into bittersweet celebration on the chorus. The intensifying pop momentum is revved up so high it soars over its own complexities, and if catching lovers in the bogs isn't a universal concern, the heady grasp of gasping disco specifics can't be denied. The instant you listen, it's like she has never been away. Fältskog has never been more tuneful and charming than when having misery and a disco-ball to contend with, and "don't run for the dorr, get back on the florr, don't give them what they're waiting for" is just one of the many lyrical gifts.

Overall, the lavish ornamentation transforms the curiosity of the singer's shy, hesitant gloom of the verses (which are a massive departure for this one of course), into perfectly inhabitable moments of madness that keep going on and on and on long after it has finished, and my feet keep dancing.

ABBA's The Visitors

The disdainfully understated ripples of off-the-pedestal melancholy on ABBA's Should I Laugh Or Cry are an unequivocal indication of how sophisticated and regal their sound had circumstancially evolved to become: sure their songs were now so brittle that commercial success was drying up and leaving all the wrong stains, of which the public did not want to see (their two in-band marriages ending in divorce, the girls getting older, etc), but their final album The Visitors is a triumph of discreet beauty, solemn introspection and traumatic fantasy, pulled off with stoic dignity, and musical and lyrical grace. Like clouds of thunder breaking, Frida's lightning-bolt vocal reverberates as if stirring through the stagnation of curdled tears. The title track and Under Attack are peculiar 'anthems' - lacking the world-concquering charge of Take A Chance, they are world-weary, alienated and by the very definition of pessimistic narcisism; highly glamourous. Agnetha may have shone vividly on the triumphantly miserable The Winner Takes It All, but Frida bravely steps up to the demands of material that is even darker and emotionally obscured - the frosty When All Is Said And Done is sung with focused grit and may have been 'part 2' to TWTIA's 'part 1' (the same thing could be said for Frida's One Man, One Woman and Agnetha's Knowing Me, Knowing You), but her glass-cut vocal shreds away the misery, a convincing militant campaign of wounded aggression ploughing through their internal collapse. Her tremoring vocal is almost livid, lamenting ruefully that both parties are 'slightly worn, but dignified and not too old for sex', and grimaces the need for 'humble pie' whilst sounding about half a pill from a nervous breakdown.

Below: both freshly single girls fight over the presumably well-endowed camera man's attention...

So the songs on this album are absolutely miserable: the twee 2 For The price of 1, with ironic soft-rock porn guitar, magnifies the joyless sexlife of ordinary people having an open relationship, but has the charm of someone ugly not believing their luck when they manage to pull a drunk person at a bar - one can laugh but is sure glad it's not them. The whispered, jaunty chorus conveys the pathetic promise of 'discretion assured'. The poignant and pensive grown-up lullaby Like An Angel Passing Through My Room is carefully crafted, and sees Frida lying in an empty bed with the other side still slightly warm - I can just imagine Frida singing this whilst smoking a fag and half-heartedly checking to see if her purse is still there. Head Over Heels was a badly chosen single, a disquieting cautionary mid-tempo narrative that is typical of what is on offer here - marking the identity of a femme fatale leading to some sort of 'heels to the ceiling' corruption, the theme of separate lives in a relationship throughout the album is one giant lump in the throat which makes it so stark and unique. With the guys writing the lyrics and the girls singing them, it's tacitly palpable that every word is being frought over: the songs sympathetically mediate their difficulties.

Above: Frida was more than ready for ABBA to split, chosing to persue her ambition to become a lesbian P.E teacher.

One of Us was the album's only notable international hit single, peaking at number 3 in the UK, and plods away chirpily, as if chipping away at what once was, and is not a million miles away from Fernando. The frigid Cassandra is an acoustic ballad and definite highlight, with an alert and tall chorus burning from the same candle as I Had A Dream. Soldiers is another brave face on despair. I Let The Music Speak says it all and might have been a great album title - 'let it be a joke' is only wishful thinking, but ironically for the listener they created one of the most captivating albums of all time, for all the wrong reasons is the bittersweet uncertainty. Slipping Through My Fingers is soothing and carefully sung almost as adoring as earlier ballads, but 'a sense of guilt I can't deny' is refreshingly honest - they are letting us all down easy.

Above: newspapers weren't to know they would never reunite, hence the subtlety.

ABBA's sense of drama and theatrical approach solidifies to mezmerizing effect, and one feels the chills on all of Frida's vocals in particular. They pull off sounding avidly depressed and serious without ever appearing absurd and ridiculous: it really is an album about fighting to keep hold of one's esteem and sanity, but crucially without the comforting crutch of youth's vanity. The pervasive restrain is as tense as it is beguiling - they do chirp up sporadically, adding subtle warmth and charm with their innate flexibility that never vanishes. The Visitors certainly was not their most appeasing album, but it is a good argument for being one of their best and most brutally honest.

So long, so long, so long!