ABBA - Voyage review

 

ABBA are back! Back! BACK!! Making even Kate Bush look prolific they’ve just released their first album in decades and people are understandably excited. If they’d just waited another three weeks they could have more accurately described `Voyage` as their first album in exactly forty years. `The Visitors` was released on 30 November 1981 though the last (ahem) Abbactivity was just over a year later in December 1982. The chances of them reforming was a million to one they said but still they have. A couple of new songs for a proposed `tour without actually touring` ballooned into a whole album’s worth and next year you can sort of go and see them performing. Well it’s them but not quite them…

 

ABBA were always one of the select few groups who we imagined would never reform so it just proves that when people say they won’t get back together they probably will. Unless they’re The Smiths. Yet `Voyage` could easily be an unearthed ABBA record from the early Eighties, perhaps a secretly made 1982 album, for it sounds as if forty years of musical developments have largely passed Benny and Bjorn by. Which is how It should be of course. Imagine the horror of Anni-Frid and Agnetha trying to rap or something!! ABBA are encased in amber here sounding exactly like they sounded in 1981. Which is odd considering they used all the modern accoutrements to announce their return and that their `tour` marshals cutting edge technology.

So `Voyage ` has what I feel are three great songs that stand up to their imperial legacy, several OK ones and a couple of tunes that would surely attain nul points from anyone.  The first great one, `I Still Have Faith In You` does contain that ABBA magic though, a bittersweet song that builds majestically and seems to be about the faith between the band members themselves. It has an emotion absent from most of the other songs and can sit comfortably with classics of the past. At precisely two minutes and four seconds Agnetha and Anni-Frid’s twin multi tracked vocals of yore soar  as the song takes off in what is the album’s best moment. They are singing “We do have it in us. New spirit has arrived.” It really does take you back decades in a good way. In a way I think it might have been better to have just had this song and nothing more, it’s stately progress and lyrics are enough really. The song could of course be about an older couple looking back but it’s about ABBA isn’t it? Strange how they can put this into a song and sound so casual when talking in interviews about the reunion.

`When You Danced With Me` is a hoedown demanding a clap along in a warm pub in Kilkenny which is mentioned in the first line. The lyric is from the perspective of the girl left behind when her other half “left for the city”. He does seem to come back for the Village Fair though, bless him, probably for the eggnog though she reckons its for the music. The piano led `Little Things` is, yikes, Christmassy, and describes “children bursting with giggles and screams” which sounds a bit horrific. It’s a fur trimmed festive ballad about an idyllic Xmas Day which of course fails to mention fall outs, tantrums, frozen pipes and burned puddings. There’s a children’s choir too. It is going to sound odd between January and November.

`Don’t Shut Me Down` is one of those ABBA songs with descriptive words about ordinary things that mean more than those things and sets a sad scene with a disco beat in the tradition of `The Day Before You Came` though it does have a rather lovely chorus that screams hit single in the tradition of those famous triumphs. I really like the clarinet(?) led riff too. The words are about a woman going back to her former partner changed and willing to give things another go.

`Just A Notion` is a reheated 1978 song which bounces at `Honey Honey` velocity when it might be better swinging at half the speed. Have they used the original vocals? Not sure but it’s one of those too twee Abba songs that sounds even older than it’s age. `I Can Be That Woman` is better with just piano and vocal opening into a distinct country and western aspect; I can imagine Dolly Parton singing this. The lyrics are quite self- pitying and apologetic though, whether that plays as well in 2021 as it might have in 1981 I’m not sure.

The oddly named `Keep An Eye on Dan` seems to be about a divorced couple sharing a son or maybe just a somewhat melodramatic note to a babysitter who is looking after Dan for the weekend. It would be funny if Dan was 22. The song’s a little quirky and plays host to an outrageously Eighties synthesiser. Oh and it fades out with a snatch of `Mamma Mia`! It struck me that the title would scan perfectly to the tune of `Take A Chance on Me` so an experiment missed there I reckon. `Bumblebee` is not, disappointingly, about a yellow car that turns into a Transformer, but a rather pallid attempt at a climate change song by way of someone sitting in their garden admiring a bee. It makes `Thank You For The Music` sound like death metal!

`No Doubt About It` perks up proceedings and if they were doing a real tour they’d surely make this the opening song. It’s the albums best foot tapper for sure with what sounds like a banjo led opening and bounces along, the closest the album comes to a fast song which really builds a mood. The vocals have that joyous quality of classic ABBA even if the lyrics talk about making amends and how “I messed it up, alright.”

`Ode To Freedom` is about wanting to write an ode to freedom (er…) which I suppose they have. It brings in a choir and orchestra for those vital ABBA chords that are designed to get us to singalong. It’s a tad twisty for that and rather than going for the big finish it drifts way on a breeze neglecting the obvious option of being a showstopper. The orchestral arrangement is class but uncharacteristically Anni-Frid and Agnetha’s vocals are muffled by the choir and are  too low in the mix. Still as an apparent full stop to ABBA’s now elongated recording career it is a suitably reflective way to end not on their vocals or a catchy line but an orchestral final few seconds mirroring the way the album, at least in it’s official track listing, starts.

The tour that’s not a tour featuring digital `Abbatars` performing with a live band is definitely something different. This kind of thing usually happens to long deceased artists enabling them to tour so that other people can earn money from them. What ABBA are doing is different and not just because the foursome are thankfully still very much with us. They have actually performed the set dressed in motion capture suits so what you will see sounds slightly bizarre with the seventysomething foursome performing now while looking like their thirtysomething selves. That they’ve gone to all this trouble is unexpected considering ABBA were never a heavy touring band in their heyday.

The return of ABBA is something that has brightened up this bleak period in our cultural history and for that at least we are grateful. I dare say for all my mixed feelings about some of these songs this album will be played far more than many and may yet turn out to be a grower. Benny and Bjorn- who are handling all the press in their deadpan manner- have said this is definitely it and there will be no more music to thank them for. However I’ll be looking out from my sonic pod in forty years time just to make sure there’s not a surprise musical holoform from the one hundred and ten year old quartet.

p.s I’ve typed ABBA in capitals in this post- that’s correct isn’t it?