Nowhere does “Voyage” offer the slightest acknowledgement that almost 40 years have passed. That is something of a relief. An ABBA trading on their past strengths is preferable to an ABBA trying to keep up with events
of ABBA may be the biggest event in pop music so far this century. On November 5th the Swedish group, which quietly disbanded four decades ago, released a new album, entitled “Voyage”. With a Beatles reunion or a Michael Jackson comeback impossible, it is hard to envision anything else that might be so eagerly anticipated.
The excitement around ABBA, however, is not really related to money and statistics. They have a particular cultural heft: their music has seeped like water through porous rock into the collective consciousness and is instantly identifiable across generations. Everybody knows their tunes. Their first fans were baby-boomers, yet today teenagers flock to ABBA-themed club nights, films and musicals.
Few had any inkling how bold ABBA’s pop sensibility had been in the first place. The Swedish music scene at the time was ruled over by rigid, humourless adherents of doctrinaire folk and progressive rock. ABBA arrived like a stealthy Nordic Sex Pistols, with irresistible melodies and efferverscent arrangements in place of swearing and v-signs.
So what of that new album? Every single thing on “Voyage” strongly evokes some other, particular thing ABBA did in their initial glorious run. Nowhere does it offer the slightest acknowledgement that almost 40 years have passed. That is something of a relief. An ABBA trading on its past strengths is preferable to an ABBA trying to keep up with events.
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