Ryan’s ABBAMAIL Columns

After years of reports from all over the globe of how wonderfully brilliant Arrival are as an ABBA tribute band, I finally got a chance to experience Arrival for myself, and I am in complete awe. In much the same way this summer’s “The Dark Knight” raised the bar for comic book based movies, Arrival has now set the bar extremely high for the level ABBA tribute bands should aspire to. Finally seeing an ABBA-esque performance that gets everything so right, it just makes most ABBA tribute bands look like cheap cash in acts.

One of the biggest stand-outs in comparison to Waterloo, who are arguably one of the better ABBA Tribute bands is that, Arrival doesn’t hide behind the fact they aren’t ABBA. When I saw Waterloo perform at the Hollywood Bowl as part of the show “ABBA: The Music” they really say they’re really a group called Waterloo, and there were a number of people in attendance who thought they were really seeing ABBA. Also the promoters of “ABBA: The Music” weren’t any better at making the distinction either.

Arrival impressed me as the programs indicated this was “The Music of ABBA Featuring Arrival” Not to mention they had huge banner at the back of the stage saying the same and adding the text “From Sweden” in smaller print next to ”Arrival.” And they were also had t-shirts for sale promoting the band. And they were very open about the fact they are not ABBA when ever they paused and introduced a song indicating what album and year it came from. There was no chance anyone was going to leave this show mistakenly thinking they’ve just seen ABBA, even though what was presented was the closest thing to the real thing they’re ever going to see.

Well to catch Arrival, I checked out their tour schedule as posted on ABBAMAIL.com and while ordinarily I would have picked Las Vegas as it was the closest location to San Diego listed, but going to Las Vegas in hot month of August isn’t my idea of fun, so I thought I’d wait for the October shows in Austin, Texas. I have some family doing some work out in Austin and this concert seemed like a good chance to do a little visiting and go see a show too. Plus Arrival would be performing with the Austin Symphony Orchestra so I thought it might present a richer musical performance. Of course, after I booked the trip, I find they’re also playing Anaheim, California a week following the Austin shows. I know I’ll be going again.

The performance was held at Austin’s Long Center for the Performing Arts which looked to be a fairly new performance auditorium. It was a gorgeous hall that also had a great view of downtown Austin across the river. Anyhow, you know you’ve got to be in Texas when a couple of the ushers were in Tuxedo shirts and jackets over blue jeans and cowboy boots. Perhaps due to the performance being with the Austin Symphony, it seemed that the audience was filled with people even the original members of ABBA would call old. It really wasn’t until Arrival’s Agnetha (Jenny Gustafsson) invited the audience to sing along and dance that people felt they had permission to act like a concert audience instead of a symphony audience. While some of the geriatric portions of the audience at best could stand and sway, some took the invitation to fill the aisles and dance. By the time Arrival hit “Dancing Queen” everyone was on their feet.

The show opened with the sound of helicopters and spotlights combing the audience, and once Arrival appeared on stage they were off and running with a Swedish version of Ring Ring. The amazing attention to detail on the costumes showed. The program highlighted the relationship Arrival has had with ABBA’s costumer, Owe Sandström and with every costume change that meticulous level of detail shined through with outstanding authenticity that in ways that just added to the feeling that Arrival spent the time to research ABBA and get it right.

While many might not recognize “Ring Ring” in Swedish, the point you know Arrival loves ABBA came with the choice of the second song, “Hey, Hey, Helen” which is not an obvious pick to include in a concert. It shows that Arrival really does know the ABBA catalogue beyond the songs featured on ABBA Gold. Arrival didn’t ignore the folks who only ABBA by what appears on ABBA Gold and as their third song presented “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and adding a few lesser known gems from the ABBA catalogue along the way to audiences who might not know the songs.

While ABBA had great albums, and any tribute band could pick songs from the albums, Arrival demonstrated that their research had gone considerably further than just the albums. Arrival pulls their arrangements from ABBA’s own live performances especially paying attention to those as featured in “ABBA: The Movie” from ABBA’s 1977 tour of Australia and the “ABBA: In Concert” which showcased the London performances of the 1979 tour and highlights from the US portion of the tour. Extensive attention to details on songs like “I’ll Be Waiting For You” and “He Is Your Brother” are nearly identical to versions as heard in “ABBA: The Movie” There’s even authentic stage choreography such as the finger movements during “Mamma Mia” which add little touches of authenticity often missed by lesser cover bands.

One of the most annoying aspects of most other cover bands is the use of fake Swedish accents, and it’s just amazing how authentic real Swedish accents add to the dynamic. The accent here doesn’t feel like a joke or even an insult to ABBA, but in fact, making the enunciation of the lyrics as uniquely ABBA like as humanly possible. Very few cover bands are able to not only cover the usual hits in English, but also incorporate the Swedish versions, as evidenced by “Ring Ring” and starting the first half of “Fernando” in Swedish, and changing back over to English mid song. It even had added sense of poignancy as Arrival’s Frida (Vicky Zetterberg) sang the line about crossing the Rio Grande while performing here in Texas.

Jenny Gustafsson just blew the roof off the house with her interpretation of “The Winner Takes It All” and lord knows she’s giving Meryl Streep a run for the money as the best version of the song heard this year. Vicky Zetterberg gave a stunning performance of “Money, Money, Money” and “One Man, One Woman” And with the help of original ABBA band member, Finn Sjöberg on guitar, the girls gave an absolutely soaring version of “Eagle” that gave chills down my spine in much the same way the song did when I saw it in “ABBA: The Movie” And while the orchestra wasn’t utilized for every song, their presence on the songs they contributed to did not go unnoticed. Their presence added an extra dimension to ABBA’s brilliant songs. Arrival ensured that they took every opportunity to give the audience the chance to applaud for the orchestra which the audience did ever so appreciatively.

I wasn’t expecting to see an intermission in the show, but it was used to great effect, where the bulk of the material covered in the first part of the show were songs from the early years of ABBA, the second half opened with Vicky and Jenny in the Polar Mountain capes and starting with “Voulez-Vous” in much the same way the 1979 tour opened. And in a blending of the tours, the costumes under the capes were the 1977 tour outfits as seen in “ABBA: The Movie.”

The second act seemed to have a greater number of songs that could have the audience up and dancing, which a number of people took part in. When Arrival got to “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” I was expecting to hear “Super Trouper” begin immediately but Arrival chose to go a different option than ABBA had done, and not that I minded, I felt like I was being more than adequately rewarded with ABBA hits and album tracks throughout the concert. Apparently the lack of “Super Trouper” clearly disappointed one woman as I overheard her make the comment that she didn’t hear the song while I was in the middle of a big crowd heading towards the parking structure.

I personally though the use of “Summer Night City” to close the main part of the concert was brilliant as the song always seemed to sound better live than it did as a studio recording even for ABBA. It leaves you wanting more and that’s exactly what Arrival delivered with “Thank You For The Music” and “Dancing Queen” as the encore.

In April 2005, I wrote an open letter to ABBA tribute bands as my column for ABBAMAIL that month. The open letter was a compilation of the biggest complaints ABBA fans had for ABBA tribute bands on what they’re doing wrong. This was written in the hopes that some tribute bands would take some of the recommendations to heart and create a better ABBA recreation by implementing some or all of those measures. If you’re interested in reading that open letter to ABBA tribute bands, click here. As I’ve used this open letter to rate ABBA tribute bands in the past, it’s only fair that I put Arrival up against the same metrics before I can give them my endorsement.

The eight criteria in the open letter are, fake Swedish accents, performing other people’s songs in the concert, turning “Fernando” into an audience competition, song selection, the costumes, sticking to your “character”, respect the music, and have fun. Arrival comes up with a perfect score here. They have real Swedish accents, they stuck strictly to ABBA material, “Fernando” was done as a Swedish/English hybrid and no songs were used as a competition for audience participation. (Audience participation was requested on “Chiquitita” specifically but in a unified wave type movement for the whole audience to do at the same time.), the song choice was a brilliant mix of some lesser known songs with a lot of the big hits too, the costumes were spot on and well done. Even though there’s use of the cat costumes (which I called a cliché in the open letter), the cat costumes only made brief appearances and since they were made under Owe Sandström’s supervision to identically recreate the costumes, Arrival gets bonus points. All the songs were sung by the correct person in the group, and the extensive recreations of ABBA’s live performances showed the group had complete respect for the material, and it was very evident they love bringing the magic of ABBA’s music to audiences around the world.

I am just completely impressed by Arrival, and I can see why so many members of ABBAMAIL’s list feel Arrival is the world’s best ABBA tribute band and I completely agree! They just deliver the best and most authentic ABBA concert experience. It really shows that Arrival gets it right on every level, and dare I even be so bold as to suggest that they even do ABBA better than ABBA can. I am a convert and I hope that if Arrival ever comes your way, you make an effort to see them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under ABBA Tribute Bands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.