PositiveThe New YorkerGradvall forgoes the standard band-bio form and opts instead for a rangy study of the group’s origins and legacy. It is a wise choice ... His method is digressive and episodic ... Interposed with bits of chatty musical sociology, all given a pleasant breeziness in Sarah Clyne Sundberg’s translation .... The best chapter in The Story of ABBA contextualizes [the band\'s] choice...to sing in english .... As Gradvall shows at length, music and happenstance worked together to make ABBA a global phenomenon ... In Gradvall’s telling, we can see it as proof that ABBA has managed to construct a pop-music perpetual-motion machine. One suspects that it will continue to broadcast its delicious, ambivalent songs in one form or another, for as long as there are human ears to listen.
