With so many potential divorce-titters within the band, it’s amazing The Visitors finished up so well (as evinced by the contrasting tinny 80s sound of the extra tracks which have been tacked onto the CD release). But imagine being Agnetha or Frida and having to sing (with conviction, and as a duo) these songs about divorce written from the men’s POV; or the little manoeuvring games played in the Polar Studio control room; or that oddly aching lyric which you know was planted in spite (‘feeling stupid, feeling small, wishing she had never left at all’). OK — so this is an extrapolation of what may be wildly unrepresentative of the sessions, but there’s a subtle sense of professionalism and Nordic workability about it all, like a calm Nordic divorce, all willing to resolve without drama or fuss, amicable to each and all. B&B made the tracks, worked out most of the lyrical concept and A&E would come in later and cut their vocals in parts or together. The Abba-concept is the spirit of unity they work under despite personal woes. There’s no sense of mild distancing you get from forcibly singing another’s songs, it’s all intimate and sufficient, workable. OK — they were willing to keep performing within that framework, and to me it sounds like a cool (as in calmly detached and unperturbed, withholding the heart’s passion) and clinical Scandinavian approach to divorce. With discernable traces of broken hearts and cracked emotions below the surface. But with the understanding that the band was bigger than the sum of its relationship problems.

And another OK— it must be emphasised that only three or four of the songs are explicitly about divorce or moving on and reconciliation — though the cool Europop atmospheres and autumnal feels run throughout the disc (keywords: autumn chill, the dark clouds hide the sun, this cold December, winter night, long awaited darkness etc). Late night loneliness (Like an Angel Passing Through My Room), the passing of a daughter’s childhood (Slipping Through My Fingers) are all that much more intimate and melancholic knowing the full divorce context. Slipping especially so if seen from a custodianship angle, the child going to school in the morning but returning to the unmentioned father. It could also be less than all that, simply an oblique look at personal ageing — regret and loss being common tropes here. This is the danger of interpretive perspectives in pop: the song is written about the daughter by the father, sung with heart by the mother, so the truth is reduced to the subjective element of how it's sung. It being written by the father makes it seem strangely empathetic though.

Even as divorce music, though, sitting there in a depressed funk weeping copiously and with gnawing pain in the heart, Visitors is pretty affecting stuff. ‘One of us is crying, One of us is lying In her lonely bed / One of us is only Waiting for a call’ — interwoven with cool synths, accordion and reverbed mandolin (ugh, adult pop rock) — yet it is fundamentally music of the heart. A special mention should be made to the great Rutger Gunnarsson (right), Abba’s superior bassist. In particular his work on One of Us – all funky ghost notes and octaves played on a fretless, pushed up high in the mix with the drums. It’s a step away from the wall of sound perfected on Arrival, and it’s very precise in its economy, but damn it’s appropriate! It’s touchstone-hallmark-yardstick bassplaying. And that little bass glissando-burp dropped in — very cool.