After they found their way on their first couple of albums, Abba consistently released albums full of classic tracks. For those who haven't bought this album before and only know Abba from their singles, this is the one with Dancing Queen on it, and Knowing Me Knowing You, and Money Money Money. It also has the slightly less well known but equally excellent That's Me, and Tiger - and so on. Every track is a gem. Even the lyrically weak Dum Dum Diddle is musically stronger than initial impressions might suggest. It also contains one of Abba's very few instrumental tracks, Arrival itself (non-lyric track, anyway - the voices are still in there). I love this track.
But many people will already have this album and will be wondering whether it's worth buying it again for the extras with this version. The other reviews have already suggested you should, and I'd definitely agree. The TV documentary is excellent. It's in-depth enough to be insightful without being too personal to be comfortable. It's full of Swedish humour. It's full of complete performances of songs from the album, excellently filmed. There's also film of Abba in the studio recording Dancing Queen, a superb cartoon accompaniment For Happy Hawaii (if you cringe at cartoon pop videos, don't worry - it's pretty good), a British TV interview or two, and more. The BBC Young Nation interview asks all the right questions, showing the band members as people without being too personal, and giving a valuable insight into Bjorn and Benny's song writing methods. And Richard Skinner is excellent in his interview section.
We've known some of this TV material was out there, of course, and in fact I took the opportunity a couple of years ago to ask the appropriate people at Universal to release some of this stuff. But I'm amazed by just how good this stuff is. Thank you, Universal - and please do the same with the rest of Abba's albums.