Waterloo

Description

ABBAs second (and U.S. debut) album contains the American Top Ten title track, as well as Honey, Honey, a minor U.S. hit that deserved better. This album is rather unusual in the groups output, however, for the fact that the guys are still featured fairly prominently in some of the vocals, and for the variety of sounds including reggae, folk-rock, and hard rock embraced by its songs. The reggae number Sitting in the Palmtree is quite remarkable to hear, with its perfect Caribbean beat and those radiant female voices carrying the chorus behind the beat. King Kong Song is a good example of hard rock by rote, going through the motions of screaming vocals and over-amplified guitar (courtesy of Janne Schaffer), although even here, when the womens voices jump in on the choruses, its hard not to listen attentively; the quartet knew what a powerful weapon they had, but not quite how to use it. They get a little closer to their winning formula on the catchy, folky-textured pop song Hasta Mañana, which sounds like a lost Mary Hopkin number. Dance (While the Music Still Goes On) is on the money, as the embodiment of the Euro-disco sound that the group would move in the millions on their coming albums, although it also embraces a vague oldies sound, with a melody that somehow reminds this listener of both the Four Seasons Dawn and the Beach Boys Dont Worry Baby. [The 1999 Polygram remastering added no songs but was still a significant improvement over the original LP or earlier CD editions. Waterloo was also reissued in October of 2001 in a digipack format with extensive new notes, even crisper state-of-the-art sound, and three bonus cuts, the 1974 remix of Ring, Ring and the Swedish versions of Waterloo and Honey Honey their presence, and the 24-bit digital audio, only serve to make a beautiful album even better.] ~ Bruce Eder