In Europe, ABBA's post-Eurovision slump was finally conquered during mid-'75 and early-'76 by a hat-trick of hits: 'SOS', 'Mamma Mia' and 'Fernando'. Their first Greatest Hits collection emphasised this development by becoming the biggest selling UK album of 1976. Later that year, the group released the flagship single from their third studio album. 'Dancing Queen' became an instant classic and is still filling dance-floors 23 years later (bafflingly, it was also ABBA's only US#1...). Like its parent album, it is an example of perfect pop: heavy on the feel-good factor; spectacular vocals (listen to it on headphones for ultimate effect) and brimful of energy.

'Arrival' followed towards the end of the year. It not only delivered on the promise of 'Dancing Queen' but it wiped the floor with the band's previous albums. U2's Bono recently described ABBA's music as having "a pure joy" and 'Arrival' encapsulates this like no other ABBA album, even if it does include the heartbreak classic 'Knowing Me, Knowing You'. The irresistibly bouncy opener, 'When I Kissed The Teacher', plants a smile on your face and tracks like 'Money, Money, Money', the blues-lite 'Why Did It Have To Be Me?' and the effervescent 'That's Me' keep it there. Even the lyrically daft 'Dum Dum Diddle' has its own charm. It's surprising that only three singles were released from this album. The lush tear-jerker 'My Love, My Life' and the glam 'Tiger' would surely have been powerful chart contenders at the time.

This is an album where all of the pieces fell into place. The production and arrangements were assured and pristine. The contrasts between the women's voices were beautifully exploited. The cover, depicting the group sitting in a helicopter (white jump-suits present and correct), became one of ABBA's most famous images. For a '70s album, there is a refreshing lack of pretentiousness here.

Although ABBA have produced other terrific albums and a staggering number of classic tunes, 'Arrival' is probably the album where the spark and the magic are most evident. It is, essentially, the sound of ABBA firmly hitting their stride. This is an essential purchase and, with 'Fernando' thrown in as a bonus track, few could argue that the budget price is not worth the risk.

(P.S. - a note to PolyGram. Although the remastering of this album has been handled better than the others in the series, half of the original artwork is missing (including the lyrics) and the on-disc label is a crime against graphic design. Have you no shame? )

This cd/dvd looks very similar to one I bought in Australia for about $24 Australian dollars the other week. It's probably not a Japanese release, like this one at Amazon is, but I'm not sure that the hideously expensive Japanese release would be good value in any case. Not having seen the dvd part of this package, I'll just assume that it is identical to the Japanese version.

ABBA is, in my opinion, one of the all time greatest bands. Perhaps the greatest pop band of all time ("pop" seems too limiting a term to apply to The Beatles, which is why I suggest that moniker as ABBA's own). The band comprised the one time handsome-est couples in music (not sure who was married with whom but...) the men were Benny on piano, Bjorn on guitar, with Frida and Agnetha doing most of the singing, either together or solo.

"Arrival" was one of the first albums I owned as a child and has therefore some nostalgia value for me. Buying it again on cd meant I had a chance to see how well it has stood the test time. Time has just made this release even stronger than ever. Here's why:

The opening track, "When I kissed the teacher" is a great song. Good enough to warrant inclusion in any number of compilations, which it doesn't seem to have done. Perhaps The Police's song "Don't stand so close to me" could be considered a response to this song-they both deal with the theme of teacher/student relationships, but they approach it from different perspectives. ABBA's song is the better pop song though. It has a very nice dual accoustic guitar strumming pattern. Frida is on lead, and Agnetha (the beautiful blonde...but hey, they were all beautiful!) gives the chorus her nice, glassy vocal sound. The song features a bassy guitar, overlapping vocals and an interesting string sound. I'm pretty sure that my LP on a pretty poor turntable had a scratch or something which made it get stuck. Hearing this song on a good quality set of headphones makes the song just as great as I remembered it.

Dancing Queen-not my favourite song, though it might be their biggest selling song of all time. I'm male, so maybe songs about dancing girls didn't really resonate for me. Anyway, it really isn't that bad a song. It's an energetic pop song featuring piano and violin, which builds to a musical and vocal crescendo. Think of it as a soundtrack song for lively young girls who imagine they are the stars of a movie about themselves. A feel good song, featuring bass guitar.

My love my life-a nice song which maybe I appreciate more now than when I listened to it as a child. It has ethereal vocals, orchestral arrangement and a noticeable bass guitar. It's a catchy break up song. To me it has echoes in a later song by one of the ABBA guys: a song from the musical "Chess" called "I know him so well", which Elaine Page sung, I think.

Dum dum diddle-another childhood favourite song of mine. It's the kind of catchy pop song that appeals to kids but which I still find catchy. It has a weird synthesiser intro riff. If you've heard about 'car widows', that is, woman who have boyfriends or husbands more interested in their cars than their partner, this song will appeal. In this song, the fiddle is what the guy is more interested in, and the song is just the woman wishing she was a violin so that the guy would shower her with the same attention!

Knowing me knowing you-one of the strongest songs on this album. Features Frida's cool, deeper vocals (compared to Agnetha's higher vocal range). Has a nice, accoustic guitar strumming pattern. Whilst Frida's vocals are haunting, Agnetha provides some breathier vocals. The guys provide backing vocals too. It's another break song, and, again, bass guitar is prominent.

Money, money, money-another very strong song and Frida again provides a deeper vocal sound...this time her voice is husky. The song features a rock guitar/lead guitar sound. A song about dreaming how much better life would be if you had money. Agnetha sings along with Frida and if you like bass guitar, heres another track where it features.

The last, most famous song from this album would be "Fernando". Back in the days of Australia's most famous music show, "Countdown", Fernando spent some 16 weeks in the number one position across Australia. I seem to remember this track being on the original Australian release of the LP, but here it is listed as a 'bonus track'. The song is a haunting love song, I think, set during wartime. The synthesiser has a haunting pipe sound, and there is a nice military drumming touch to the drum sound. Frida hits some long notes very nicely. In a Rolling Stone interview last year, I think, Metallica's drummer Lars Ulrich mentions this song as the kind of song he posits as a "torch song" or some such. Pretty good knowledge of a pop band for a heavy metal star!

Of the rest of the songs:

Arrival-a nice instrumental track with a bagpipe kind of sound. A hummable melody where the girls do in fact the melody.

That's me-an uptempo pop song. It's sort of like a lot of pop songs in one. Features piano, maracas and some funky guitar sounds.

Why did it have to be me-a 1950s style rock'n'roll song. One of the guys takes the lead vocal duties. The girls sing along as well. The song features a country style electric guitar twang. Piano features, as well as the saxophone or some such instrument.

Tiger-one of the few forays into rock style music (another example of that on another album would be the great song "Rock me", which one of the guys sings). Has a big drum sound, keyboard, electric guitar and Agnetha does a heavy metal-ish type screech at the end of the song. There is a pretty, poppier bit in the song featuring the piano. This is another song that I perhaps didn't rate highly as a child but listening to it as an adult now, it's not bad at all.

Now, for the rest of the real bonus songs-"Happy Hawaii" is just "Why did it have to be me" slightly reworked with different lyrics. It has a nice intro and outro sound-scape of beach noises. Lyrics are daggy though...not as daggy as the truly awful "Bang a boomerang" thankfully (from another album). The song features some kind of wook instrument-glockenspiel? Something like that.

I can't say that having non-English versions of some of Arrival's songs is welcome. Of these songs, I probably like the Swedish language version of "Fernando" the best. The girls' vocals overlap nicely and in a different way to the English version. It would have been preferable to me to have these foreign language songs on the DVD which accompanies this package.

The original Australian release of this album is an absolute classic. This package contains all those songs and some extra. If you only know ABBA songs from their "Gold" compilation, I think you are missing out on a great album with great songs which don't appear on many of their most well known hits compilation.

this is an album of contrasts, in which abba showed undeniable sounds of absolute pop greatness that was to follow, it is still marred by a few poor bubblegum songs which are remnants of the group's early days; however, 'arrival' contains abba's two best songs; 'dancing queen' and 'knowing me, knowing you' are pop classics of contemporary music, the former, the group's most engaging song, a masterpiece of early disco, with sweeping strings, glissando piano, a tremendous bassline, and then those angelic vocals; and the melody, it simply defies words; 'knowing me, knowing you' is possibly abba's best constructed song, majestically produced, carefully yet seemingly effortlessly executed; besides the melody, the vocals, there is a melodramatic lyric, and that guitar solo, ranked by UK rock magazine MOJO among the 100 best of all time; 'dum dum diddle', unashamedly bubblegum, is so irresistible it becomes one of those guilty pleasures, and 'money money money', another signature abba song, among else rides on an awesome bassline and great guitar work; side two unfortunately brings several drops in quality, most notably 'why did it have to be me' and 'tiger', however, it is forgiven considering the rest

"My Love My Life", "Dum Dum Diddle" and "That's Me" - this album has THREE superbly crafted tracks that almost never make their way into compilations, for reasons that are beyond me.

"My Love My Life" is a bittersweet farewell ballad not inferior to "One of Us" (also a rather poor scorer in compilations, for some reason) or "Knowing Me Knowing You".

"Dum Dum Diddle" is perhaps the strongest example (along with "I Do I Do I Do I Do") of ABBA's formidable skill of matching a perfect melody with its crystal female vocals. The ultimate in ABBA's feelgood factor delivery.

As for "That's Me" - it will be a revelation for anyone who had too much of compilation diet. It is a true gem - melody and rhytm blended into a real hit, powerful and tender, forward and sensitive at the same time.

For these songs alone, the album is worth buying. You know all about the remaining tracks already - check other reviews.

This one is a flawed masterpiece. Unfortunately, Bjorn's simplistic lyrics and song concepts always dragged the quality down a notch (hence 4 stars instead of 5.) Also, this album has one rather boring instrumental ("Arrival"), which should have been used as a "B" side to one of the singles. But if you want to buy an ABBA album, this is the one to spring for. It has their only #1 US single, "Dancing Queen", about as catchy a song as can be written, with practically angelic harmonies. Few can resist it. "That's Me" is almost as buoyant and catchy. Probably their finest moment (at least singer Frida's and lyricist Bjorn's) was "Knowing Me, Knowing You", a song that got me interested in them in the first place. The lyrics here are truly touching ("In these old familiar rooms/Children would play/Now there's only emptiness/Nothing to say.") Other songs, like "When I Kissed the Teacher" and "Dum Dum Diddle" have dum dum lyrics, but are superior songs, sonically. "My Love, My Life", has a great vocal by Agnetha, but is annoyingly overproduced (they were trying to imitate "I'm not in Love" by 10cc.) Hopefully, one day someone will use her vocal over a more sparse production. Some reviewers have criticized "Tiger", but I think it's a mini-gem, a precursor to "Love Is Like Oxygen" by Sweet. "Money, Money, Money" has a darker sound, a "cabaret" feel to it, and with excellent vocals by both singers, is one of their standouts. "Why Did It Have to Be Me" is okay, until you hear the box set's first version of the song, called "Happy Hawaii", which is much more upbeat, Beach-boy like, and joyous. It seems like Bjorn (the lyricist) overpowered Benny (who did the first, better arrangement). Still, if you're interested in the group, this is the first non-compilation album to buy.