(Track from album, "The Visitors")
Prepare yourself here; this review is as much about the end of ABBA as anything else; it's easy to go overboard on the context sometimes...
1981; melancholia rules over all. As one of my most recent reviews documented, New Order were picking up the pieces after the abrupt conclusion of Joy Division's musically violent and lyrically abrasive stand, one which shook England, and indeed, a great deal of the onlooking punk-witnessing world. Elsewhere, Depeche Mode were beginning to explore darker sonic avenues after the departure of Vince Clarke, and Ultravox were trotting out "Rage In Eden" in Köln. It was all a bit gloomy, to be frank.
Meanwhile, in Scandinavia, the world's biggest pop band were recording what was to be their final album, one which, interestingly, was amongst the first to be mixed digitally and the first album in history to be manufactured on the (then) new CD format. You might think, given ABBA's discography, brimming with dance-floor filler such as "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia!", would end on a similarly well-written but ultimately cheesy note. Well it didn't.
"The Visitors" is consistently dark. Even the fast-paced confusion of the title track has a deeper, danker sound than that found on previous records though this change in atmosphere is perhaps more noticeable on singles "One Of Us" and "Slipping Through My Fingers" which, whilst not especially dark carry a heavy sadness, something relatively unexplored on the band's '70s efforts. But in many ways, it doesn't matter because the music is very well written and satisfying to the ear in the same way that Lennon/McCartney compositions are, but with keyboards and a more contemporary edge.
Several months of writing and recording demos (which can be found, medlied on the deluxe 2012 re-release) passed before ABBA finally came up with this haunting finale to their last release. The song opens with the sound of a ticking clock, accompanied at the 0:10 mark by the music-box-esque glint of a synthesiser, the riff for which is sweeping and beautiful. Even before the smooth vocal glides in over the song with it's regretful tone and disconsolate words, there's something overwhelmingly sad about the track. The chord changes are different and alternative, not discordant, but certainly at odds with most pop music from 1981. At 0:57 a medieval-style, harpsichord-like keyboard shimmers over, followed by strings about 10 seconds later. The lyrics are a continuous serenade of solitude and lugubriousness right up until the markedly different middle eight section, characterised by another very satisfying and seemingly juxtaposed warm chord change, just before the song fades out with only the ticking of the clocks audible.
It's a phenomenally emotional send-off, the words echoing the isolation and loveless atmosphere of the band in the early '80s as well as the thematic nature of other songs on the record. My one criticism would be that the song never quite fills out; the demo-medley on the 2012 remaster of "The Visitors" offers an insight into what various versions of the song sounded like, and though the attempts to fill in with bass (and even drums) sound corny here, in one's head, it's easy to imagine the perfect backing to this song that doesn't compromise the silky soul and breezy thinness of the sonic. Funnily enough, the band members say the same - that it's like you're waiting for something to happen, and it never does.
Regardless, I think it's a very lovely song and if nothing else, a very instrumentally adept and powerfully passionate goodbye. Easily one of the best album closers of the '80s. Easily.
★★★★★
Versions of “Like An Angel Passing Through My Room”
Album Version - 3:39
"From A Twinkling Star To A Passing Angel" (Demo Medley) - 9:14