We could talk that miracles exist. ABBA after forty years off the game they announced in a big way, in early September, that they were republishing unpublished material. This return was announced by social networks showing the album cover photo: a beautiful snapshot very sci-fi showing the solar flares of a new advent for history. messianism in the age of “ABBAtares” and virtual reality.
The story ended with The Visitors (1981) an album that meant goodbye to a triumphant career full of incontestable successes. ABBA They are a legend, a band always in search of the perfect melody, the timeless melody whose potential has crossed all generations. And it remains.
What do ABBA represent at the moment? Are they a mere product of clever marketing managers? Are they the last stronghold for nostalgia to end up annihilating us forever? Many questions flutter in the air, but Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Björn Ulvaeus They’re back, flesh and blood I don’t know, but as a digital version of themselves (not holograms, by God, what bad taste!), and they have announced concerts for next year. Andersson left a record on Twitter of the band’s state of mind: “We’re truly sailing in uncharted waters. With the help of our younger selves, we travel into the future.” The future is simulation, standardization and regulation of bodies. ABBA they are, for the sake of neoliberalism, mere ghosts whose bodies are already specters that we can only remember in black and white postcards, or in robotic photos inside this album.
Let’s get to the strictly musical. Voyage (Universal, 2021) apart from an immodest exercise in nostalgia, it is an album that contains songs of autumnal beauty, demodé and kitsch, with a bombastic sound thanks to the wisdom in the production of Andersson, and that remains faithful to the aesthetics of an unbeatable alliance.
They know it, and when they want they can be – and they are, needless to say – a machine for making potential hits even though at present we do not know what they claim to be: the advancements to the release of the album, “I Still Have Faith In You” ( wonderful ballad with opulent arrangements of the Stockholm Concert Orchestra), and Don’t Shut Me Down (disco beats in the wake of “Dancing Queen”) are pure molasses to the ears. The incursion into other sounds, in this case with Celtic roots, in “When You Danced With Me” ends with a bittersweet flavor: quite rushed arrangements, but great voices as always.
The art in the ballad is an irrefutable fact in the credit of the Norwegian combo, but this “Little Things” (a Christmas song!) Is to blush, hit the mute, and go running to put on a Greatest Hits album, but “I Can Be That Woman” is pure ambrosia, although Bear Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson they will not enter the pantheon of feminist activists.
The glam force of “Just A Notion” is infallible and makes the most painted happy, “Keep An Eye On Dan” opts for the most synthesized sounds and narrates, in the form of a monologue, the misfortune of a divorce reuniting with him pathos sound that goes from “The Visitors to the“ Voulez-Vous ”. “Bumblebee” is a failed attempt by an environmentalist manifesto, “No Doubt About It” injects adrenaline into a vein with somewhat disconcerting arrangements, and for the end they have an ace up their sleeve: fragments of Swan Lake from Tchaikovsky and a lyric that deals with the futile task of writing songs that will be remembered. An act of modesty for a comeback which is precisely the antithesis.
Listen ABBA – Voyage (Universal)
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