Listening party for Agnetha’s new A+ album

Watching Bobby’s Brother on TV

We met at Pastizzi’s for Maltese pastries and tiramisu, then went back to mine to listen to Agnetha’s latest A+ reimagined album, in the exact tracklisted order.

Had a discussion about whether Agnetha’s A+ album cover was shot in 2023 or 2013. David sought a ruling via ABBAtalk and turns out it’s 2023 so the next dins at Pastizzi’s is on him!

The poor love was already exhausted after him and Angus had spent all day, when not doing their Nina Pretty Ballerina office jobs, running around since the crack of dawn trying to track down Agnetha’s A+ CD at any record shop in town. NONE had it! They’d wanted to recreate the record-buying excitement of a new album release from back in the good old days. At least we’d all combined our postage costs to do one bulk order from Europe so that’ll arrive one day…

There’s a fave line we all love from Agnetha’s new single, Where Do We Go From Here: “I thought I carried a heart made of steel, But you cracked it open ’cause you broke the seal.” Tech expert Angus used all his AI know-how, involving 10,000 super computers, to ask it to create a picture of Agnetha “breaking the seal” so we could all enjoy this artistic concept in visual format. “The main problem is the hands don’t look very real,” he said, oblivious to the fact that the concept of an imaginary Agnet breaking a seal was so far out there. (NB: His custom t-shirt-making machine had run out of transfer paper but as soon as he gets more, we’ll all be able to place orders…)

We ate Swedish pickled mushroom-flavoured potato crisps, Kafferep biscuits, Dumle candy and Daim chocolate, from IKEA, after Angus visited to get a free KÖR car organiser, designed for mid-sized SUVs, and a $10 voucher. While renowned for his attention to detail, Louise helpfully pointed out: “You just have to buy a car now so you can use it.”

I haven’t mentioned anything about George so far, suffice to say he spent the evening straightening all my pictures on the walls, as they were “slightly crooked”.

Then we watched Bobby’s Brother’s enlightening interview with Agnetha’s friend and producer Jörgen Elofsson. Why did he strip the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra off the entire album and replace it with a modern-day equivalent of Moog Plays ABBA?

Our faves were Back on Your Radio and I Was A Flower, with the great accusatory line: “Now look what you have done,” which prompted discussion about ABBA songs that blame someone else for their misery. George recalled Happy Hawaii has the line: “Someone is waiting and I forget you,” so we replayed that amazing ABBA song.

Had a moment’s silence for UK Alex’s canine critic Zippy, who loves the whistling bit in Perfume In the Breeze. Sorry Zips, it’s gone!

Am not going to name who looked totally confused during the whole listening, and the other whose fave song had been transformed into “something you’d play while doing the ironing”.

Meanwhile, at the same time out in Trundle they were holding the annual ABBA Festival in the middle of nowhere, and for the first time were live-streaming! ABBA fan H was planning on doing some busking there, but the council application required $10million in liability insurance! I dared him to play anyway: “I want live footage of you being arrested for playing Mamma Mia illegally on the main drag during an ABBA Festival!” But he knew there was no way we’d be visiting him at Bathurst Correctional Centre, since we hadn’t even made it to Trundle (5.5 hours’ drive from Sydney).