Album Review

With its higher-than-average share of catchy pop abstractions (minus the usual gloppy, ersatz-Sound of Music ballads), Super Trouper is Abba's most engaging music lesson since Arrival. The title tune – which boasts airy harmonies, a goose-stepping beat and images of angelic übermenschen pining in the spotlight for their long-distance lovers–evokes a tinselly fantasy of Europop Über Alles. "The Winner Takes It All," with its "O Solo Mio" declamatory style, amusingly compares puppy love to gambling and contains one priceless couplet: "The judges will decide/The likes of me abide." "On and On and On" is the quartet's punchiest Beach Boys imitation yet.

Abba will have a go at anything, if it tickles them. "Me and I" explains schizophrenia to preschoolers. "The Piper" sweetly warns against fascist seducers. "The Way Old Friends Do" is a Europop echo of "Amazing Grace." Ultimately, though, Abba are as expendable as they are exportable. In treating pop music as a computer game, they're Sweden's answer to Space Invaders. (RS 342)

STEPHEN HOLDEN

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