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Post by chron on Mar 18, 2024 3:25:03 GMT
2. Little boots describes the song as dark, beautiful, upbeat and SO ABBA "Dark [and] upbeat" - calls to mind an instruction producer Martin Hannett allegedly once gave to A Certain Ratio's guitarist Martin Moscrop during a recording session: "play faster but slower".
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Post by chron on Jan 17, 2024 17:23:05 GMT
Under Attack. The pulsing, neurotic tension set up in the verses promptly and flatly dissipates in the ho-hum squib of the chorus. There's no flowering or strong counter-punch, just a tired-sounding sing-songy jog-through. It's a chorus that hasn't done its homework or that can't quite be bothered (which makes it interesting actually, but only as something to think about—in relation to the group and where it found itself then, as three of its members got to withing a couple of years or so of turning forty—not as something to switch-off to and get a buzz off). It steps down, when it should be stepping up or stepping off. The nervous, creeping verses, however, forever hinting at a resolution that never arrives, remain great and engaging. (The Visitors takes a similar thematic and atmospheric tack to Under Attack, while serving up a terrific 'releasing' chorus to boot.)
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Post by chron on Nov 25, 2023 14:39:42 GMT
That's a fine rating; unfortunately there's no review attached! (Also, ozpop22 has left no other feedback anywhere else, making it impossible to get any sort of handle on what their idea of 'wonderful' might be.) The response from Kiwi is less encouraging (and not that much more expansive than ozpop's), but is more useful as guidance.
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Post by chron on Nov 19, 2023 0:23:15 GMT
You're a great contributor, chron - you're concise, too. I'm the long-winded rambler who needs reining in! Thanks for the kind words, Homey (you flatterer!). I've no problem admitting to being a droner; the 'samey' bit is the bigger drag. I haven't got a lot to bring to the ABBAchat table these days. I drop by regularly, but the Voyage album hasn't grabbed me, the Voyage show isn't my sort of thing, and I'm not a collector - I'm down to crumbs, of the stale variety. (Some of you proper fans will laugh at this, but the most invigorating ABBA-related experience I've had recently has come from finally getting around to giving Frida's solo Shine and Agnetha's solo I Stand Alone a listen—that's right; those two have come new to me after Voyage! Terrific, heartening listens, both.) Btw, I've never thought of your replies as coming across as long-winded, but they do always seem to have an easy-going, natural warmth.
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Post by chron on Nov 17, 2023 0:44:22 GMT
Why did Chron delete his post here - and in another thread? I'm getting sick of the sound of my own opinions! I keep rambling and it gets samey.
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Post by chron on Nov 11, 2023 17:01:51 GMT
"Now and Then" recorded in 1978 was not included in either Double Fantasy from 1980 or the follow up out take album Milk and Honey. Scraping the barrel. In fairness ABBA did this with Just a Notion. To be fair to them, with two band members dead and gone, Paul and Ringo's hands were far more tied than ABBA's. It's not a great with a capital G Beatle track (although that simple, plaintive verse melody is maddeningly hooky; it was replaying itself in my head after a single play-through), but it's still a touching listen. Have you heard the version that someone's put together that (re)incorporates the bridge section that featured in John's original demo? It adds a lot (comes in at about the two minute mark):
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Post by chron on Nov 11, 2023 16:40:03 GMT
(They might attempt an AI clean-up job on John's vocals on FAAB and Real Love for the anniversary Anthologies, presuming those get done. Someone's already done their own AI scrub-up of Free As A Bird, which gives Lennon equal vocal weight and presence to thrilling effect, and makes the track seem far more a proper, collective group effort. I can actually make out what he's singing now! I'd never properly caught the "Like a homing bird I'll fly" line before, and had never bothered to check what the lyrics were on the various lyrics sites.)
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Post by chron on Nov 11, 2023 15:50:51 GMT
It’s also interesting that these blue/red album reissues don’t include Free As A Bird or Real Love. They are the tracks most closely related to Now and Then. It’s almost like they’ve had to find a home for this “new” song, whereas the other two already have one with the 1990s Anthology issues. It’s as though they’re embarrassed by them and aren’t going to let them out again. There might be a bit of 'craftsmanship' embarrassment - Lennon's strong and 'present' AI extracted/spruced up vocals on Now And Then point-up how weedy and wraithlike the equivalent cassette-derived vox are on Free As A Bird and Real Love (although I like the ghostliness of the effect; it seems apt), but I reckon leaving the latter two off 1967-1970 is more about trying to stay true to the job that the original 'Red' and 'Blue' compilations did/do. The latest track is a token inclusion; making a three song sequence out of FAAB, Real Love and Now And Then at the end of '67-'70 would risk giving a distorted picture of the Beatles' working career. The blend and balance of what we get seems right: all the hit singles plus three or four key tracks from each of their albums (the reissues afford an expanded selection), and one nod in the direction of the reconvened/partial Beatles. A nod suffices. As you say, the other two newer tracks (which at this point are nearly thirty years old—at the time they first came out the break-up of the Beatles had happened 'only' twenty-five years earlier!) are on Anthology sets, which will surely get the remaster/reissue treatment in a couple of years.
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Post by chron on Mar 9, 2023 17:32:32 GMT
Don't forget this was 70s 80s 90s so would really exclude Dusty Springfield and Cass Eliot. I'd considered that, but their work stretched into the '70s, and beyond in the case of Dusty, so their presence would've pervaded. Janis Joplin I'd discounted because she barely made it to 1970—Pearl was released at the start of '71 (and besides, she's another raucous bellower). Anyway, they cover their arses by calling it 30 of the Greatest, not The 30 Greatest. And anyway, anyway, I really shouldn't care.
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Post by chron on Mar 9, 2023 15:27:27 GMT
⬆️ Female singers of 70s/80s/90s Glaring omission: Karen Carpenter. Also no Dionne Warwick, Barbra Striesand,Olivia Newton Johm, Roberta Flack, Joan Armatrading, Gladys Knight Yet included are Kim Wilde, Heather Small and Bananarama...ffs! Excluding Karen Carpenter should be a chargeable offence! Also: no Joni Mitchell, no Sandy Denny, no Cass Elliot, no Dusty Springfield, no Minnie Riperton, no Elizabeth Fraser, no Annie Haslam, no K.D. Lang. Far too many over-emoting belt-'em-outs, who've had neither the nous nor the modesty to rein back and simply serve the song, along with too many whose voices do a fine and solid job in context but which are ultimately thin, limited and lacking in presence (Kim Wilde, Debbie Harry, the Bananaramas). (Kate Bush is a superbly creative artist, but that's in spite of her voice - as shrill as a car alarm when it's not sounding cloyingly coquettish - not because of it. It's depressing how often she gets lauded on the basis of that frighten-the-horses yowl.) Outside of her Sugarcubes stuff I'm no great fan of Björk, but she surely deserves a place here more than Kim Wilde or Justine bloody Frischmann. This list actually mostly better functions as a who's who of who should be barred from gaining entry to a Top Thirty like this.
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Post by chron on Mar 7, 2023 19:41:24 GMT
I have no complaints about the album, waiting 40 years for another one, and, hoping they would return. I feel very blessed with this album. I think the songs are equal to their 70’s output. I think I Still Have Faith In You bests When All Is Said And Done and is pretty well the equal of One Man, One Woman, to pick out two old songs that can be thematically related to ISHFIY, but I struggle to think of anything else on Voyage that attains the quality of the best of the heyday stuff, or that gets close. I think Bjorn's Voyage lyrics are too mannered and descriptive/scene-setting (it as though he thinks the fussiness and archness of The Day Before You Came and I Am The City represents the high-water mark of his ability, rather than the deceptively prosaic, complex spareness of Knowing Me, Knowing You or The Name Of The Game), and I think that for whatever reason (doing musicals, re-immersing himself in Scandinavian folk and trad. or whatever) Benny's pop mojo has lost power.
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Post by chron on Mar 7, 2023 14:24:30 GMT
In lieu of an express preference indicated, I think he/him might fairly safely be assumed on the basis of username chosen (isolating and adopting that particular part of a song title for a name suggests a hint of casual self-identification at play somewhere along the line).
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Post by chron on Feb 12, 2023 13:51:01 GMT
I didn't mean it that way and you know it, I'm sure You're right, the way it was worded just made it possible to take things in another direction—this has become the catch-all thread, after all. (It's difficult to voice concerns about what the Voyage show represents or presages, because you can easily end up sounding dramatic or defeatist when doing so.)
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Post by chron on Feb 12, 2023 13:22:43 GMT
Yes, you can argue that ABBA is not really there That actually beyond argument, since irrefutably the group members themselves do not perform in person. That's why it can be described as a show or a virtual performance or an 'experience' but not an ABBA concert, since a band concert is, among other things, an agreement between artist(s) and fans to assemble at a given place and a given time, and to interact in real space and in flesh and blood in order for each to feed off something sui generis provided by the actual presence of the other. I've always disliked the idea of the Voyage show for its implications: you wonder where it will end and what it will ultimately add up to. (I now gather that the fashion world is toying with the idea of creating virtual animations of retired catwalk models and dead pop icons such as Marilyn Monroe to somehow parade at clothes shows.) There's something depressingly vacant at the heart of this idea of virtually re/animating aged and retired or dead stars, a feeling of a 'Body Snatchers culture' evolving that is speeding up what Bifo Berardi has called "the slow cancellation of the future", but that's for another discussion)
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Post by chron on Feb 8, 2023 14:11:09 GMT
I suppose I was being a bit summary. I'm sure the band gets into the spirit of playing the songs, and music being performed live always has a frisson of something about it, but I bet even what instrumental breaks there are mimic the form and length of the ones in the studio recordings to a slavish degree (there'll be little to no opportunity for a lead guitarist to 'cut loose' during Eagle, say, since the band is having to synch its playing to the movements of the avatars, and working with your eye is on a timer gives no real scope to add something new).
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Post by chron on Feb 7, 2023 14:46:52 GMT
To wonder is to indicate that it matters.
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Post by chron on Feb 6, 2023 14:08:32 GMT
The appeal of ABBA's music lies in its originality and unique sound, which can be difficult to replicate in cover versions. But there's the rub: replication can't lead to originality or uniqueness, which is why the work of non-tribute pop acts can feel closer to embodying the creative spirit of ABBA than the efforts of 'duplicationists' such as Bjorn Again or the band being employed to provide the backing music for the Voyage show. There is something inherently empty about simulation.
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Post by chron on Feb 1, 2023 12:15:56 GMT
My moving of posts to this topic wasn’t intended to stifle discussion, and I hope no one feels intimidated just because Groenalund are registered on here (which appears to have been only to promote themselves, which is fair enough). Or perhaps the discussion just reached a natural end? It's bound to 'backwater' it somewhat, since the Voyage Discussion thread is the only properly active thread at the moment. Also, knowing that someone from Groenalund is a member might well cow responses a bit, although I don't think anyone has posted anything up to now that's been unreasonable. As you say, the account has almost totally been used to promote the group, which, if the mods have no problem with we'll have to go along with, although you wouldn't want a lot of that sort of stuff (the same goes for people who have joined fairly clearly in order to peddle their own cover versions of ABBA tracks, and who don't engage across the threads otherwise). In a couple of the best and longest established music/arts forums I visit, posts that contain outright self-promotion are frowned upon on the basis that forums are places for discussion and debate and shouldn't be used as marketplaces; people there have been kicked out for blatantly using an account to self-advertise.
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Post by chron on Jan 30, 2023 17:05:29 GMT
I'm sorry, but I don't agree that GROENALUND is a weak and lackluster band [...] Certainly the Color of Agnetha and Frida's Voice can hardly be replaced. I agree with the last point for sure, but I get the feeling that if Groenalund could come close to replicating the sound and character of Frida and Agnetha's voices then they wouldn't feel much compunction about doing so. 'Weak' and 'lacklustre' weren't used I don't think (although I might be tempted to use the latter), I just find their shtick a bit calculating. Their vocals are certainly decent, but to go on what I've heard they're also pretty characterless - they have a sort of generic sweetness that seems widespread at the moment. I think over the years other female pop singers from Europe have attained the quality achieved by Frida and Agnetha while having, to a greater or lesser degree, their own sound and style: Björk, Katharina Franck, Anneli Drecker, Anja Garbarek, Claudia Brücken, Beth Hirsch, Marie Frank, etc. (The last has tended to fly under the radar, so let's stick a link down):
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Post by chron on Jan 29, 2023 18:13:23 GMT
I’d say Ace of Base was more like ABBA. Or Bel Canto or The Cardigans. Erase/Rewind is slick, stylish, urbane and wistful; suggestive of later (first period) ABBA without ever being a pat imitation:
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Post by chron on Jan 29, 2023 12:17:39 GMT
I’ll never be able to compare Voyage favourably with the eight historic albums so I haven’t tried to. Voyage is ABBA (albeit the four individuals that were once ABBA a minimum of 35 years on) but such a long gap should help free it from comparisons. It does for me anyway. I feel the same way, but I reckon in the longer term (when you and I and ABBA have all shuffled off) the 'metamorphic' effects of time will have compacted Voyage and the earlier albums closer together, so that for those only just or not yet born, they will all feel more of a piece. I think it's difficult for anyone who lived through something of ABBA's initial career run to view Voyage as anything other than a late, singular hurrah.
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Post by chron on Jan 29, 2023 11:52:53 GMT
I'd be wary of any band trying to carry on another band's 'legacy' and, to be undiplomatically frank, Groenalund appear pretty shamelessly to be trying to hitch a ride to commercial success on the coattails of ABBA. What you're ideally looking for is a band whose modus somehow encapsulates something of ABBA's essential creative spirit without it mining the latter's sound, style or image in any blatant, imitative way (warning systems should to be prepped and ready whenever any two-girl-two-boy bubblegum-type group hoves into view). I ought to hear more of their stuff before judging, but on the basis of a brief listen, nothing especially grabs me about Groenalund's music—the vox, as is so often the case, are qualitatively streets behind ABBA's.
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Post by chron on Dec 26, 2022 19:14:13 GMT
Really like that. Strangers is one of my absolute favourite Frida solo tracks, but that mix doesn't do anything disrespectful, and really brings something nice and breezy to it (lovely bit of Kraftwerk-ish sequencer work; the only thing that's a bit staid is the drum programming). I used to be a bit of a purist when I was younger, but in recent years I've become, partly naturally and partly through force of will or logic, an anti-purist. Pop is a bastard art form, not a high one, and I'm all for people pulling and pressing it into new shapes, as well as, as a listener, toying around with album track sequences, etc.
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Post by chron on Dec 26, 2022 17:58:12 GMT
George said he would've changed a few notes here and there had the similarity with He's So Fine consciously registered with him. (The judge accepted that My Sweet Lord was not a case of deliberate copying.) I can't help feeling that if George had written and presented My Sweet Lord while the Beatles were still an active, cooperative unit, either Paul or John (or Ringo or George Martin for that matter) would've pointed out almost right away how similar to He's So Fine it was (the latter got into the UK Top Twenty as the Beatles were on the cusp of becoming huge, and only seven-odd years before My Sweet Lord was created). 'Subconscious plagiarism' is just about plausibly admissible (especially if you're a Beatle and can afford the finest defence lawyers in Christendom), but I can't help feeling it's something of a cute stretch - the Beatles in their younger years were all avid consumers of pop music and black American pop, notably (Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, the Motown roster), and I tend to think that George must've had an inkling of how close he was getting to crossing a line when the song started to fall into place.
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Post by chron on Oct 10, 2022 15:20:26 GMT
It hasn't even got the charm of ugliness. It's so clearly dashed-off that you're left thinking at this point that someone is actively having fun at the expense of the those driven to obtaining every officially sanctioned, barely exclusive release. That cover says: we can put out any old scheit knocked-off in a minute, stamp a limited number on it, and some of those obsessives aren't going to be able to pass it by. (I think they missed a trick - they should've put out a set comprising four different versions, each having the '30th Anniversary' line based on the handwriting of a different ABBA member. Some would be scrambling to get all four.)
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Post by chron on Sept 26, 2022 15:34:04 GMT
Yay - an individually numbered piece of cardboard.
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Post by chron on Sept 24, 2022 18:00:15 GMT
I agree with BAAB - they really had to launch this second coming with I Still Have Faith. 'Shut Me Down is too offhand and quirky for a lead-off in comparison. I Still Have Faith is an invitation to reacquaint, a sort of processional, the indication of something coming into bloom again. 'Smoke 'em if you got 'em', and ABBA had 'em in ISHFIY.
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Post by chron on Sept 23, 2022 17:15:54 GMT
Not you as well! Translated, this must be Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell you’re referring to Decent guess. Actually I was referring to Bush Tetras and Kim Mitchell.
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Post by chron on Sept 23, 2022 17:04:14 GMT
A shame the Voyage CD sales were behind Adkins' but still a good performance. I'm sure at this stage of the game Ulvaeus and Andersson can accept being 'pipped' with good grace. And it must be a fair shout that both Lyngstad and Fältskog would at least be broad fans of her modus operandi (it would be harder to claim the same on behalf of more left-field artists such as Bush and Mitchell).
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Post by chron on Aug 22, 2022 19:10:47 GMT
The album has perplexed me and I am frustrated with it.
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