Melody Maker - Unknown Pleasures - 20 Great Lost Albums Rediscovered - # 8 ABBA - The Visitors

'The Visitors is the ABBA album that Alan Partridge doesn't really play that often.' Taylor Parkes.

It's also not perhaps the ABBA album that you would expect a music critic to choose to convince his reader of their greatness. I've listened to plenty of their stuff during my lifetime, mostly as a result of them being the mainstay of my parent's record collection as I was growing up. They still remain the one musical artist that my mum and dad bond over. This New Year for example, when we got together as a family, children and grandchildren, ( photographic evidence below), it was Mamma Mia 2 that went on the television and we all sang along, apart from the 'too cool for school contingent'. Even they I'm sure, were wanting to tap their feet. OK, maybe not my brother-in-law. He, apparently was a Velvet Underground fan at the age of eleven. But as for me, I've always had a lot of time for them. They can easily bring me to tears. More probably than any other band. I could write a book about why that is. Though you probably wouldn't care to read it.

But The Visitors? You probably won't know many songs off it. The record came out in November 1981 and was the band's final album, though of course they've recently reformed, leading their most ardent, though I'd suggest, also  most deluded,  fans to hope there'll be another. When this came out it was one of the first albums to be pressed on CD, a sure sign that the times were a changing,  ABBA's split would prove to be another. Just as The Beatles barely made it to the Seventies, ABBA simply weren't meant for the Eighties.

While The Beatles break up felt like a divorce, ABBA going their separate ways was almost certainly made inevitable by the two that actually occurred within the band, between Benny and Anna-Frid and Bjorn and Agnetha. Boy can you hear it on the record. It's ABBA on antidepressants.

Taylor Parkes, who writes the article about The Visitors in the book, makes a very good case for it, along these lines. I listened to the album from beginning to end for the first time while reading it and would direct you towards both. This is not really an easy record to listen to, unless you're attracted by other people's pain. ABBA's pop gifts are still nakedly evident but the whole record is shrouded in a genuine melancholy. The Swedes are very good at this stuff. Have you ever seen a Ingmar Bergman film?

I won't be rushing out to try and find a second hand copy of The Visitors in a charity shop. Parkes makes the good point that it can easily be done. Not that it isn't a good record, ABBA at their most mature as you'd expect but probably not at their best. There was a reason it sold less than much of their other stuff. When I want depression I have The Cure and Joy Division. The Visitors is ultimately a suburban, grown up expression of similar emotions. You can hear where Bjorn and Benny are going from here, towards West End musicals. There are a few late, great moments on the record, Head over Heels, One of Us, Like an Angel Passing Through My Room, but really they were just too sad to stay together as a band now that they were no longer together as two couples. That I know is a very trite way to write about genuine personal heartbreak. Anyhow, their time was gone, at least for the time being. They had made up their minds it must come to an end. Do you see what I did there? Anyhow, all four band members survived the split and their resulting trauma. That's good to hear. Now they're back again. That's good to hear too!