Abba’s Voyage, the light the world needed?

After almost 40 years without an album or hardly any joint appearances, allowing his legacy in songs and his legend to grow on their own, ABBA suddenly surprised with a record return that was published this Friday around the world, accompanied by a question: Was it worth the long wait?

Entitled “Voyage“, The ninth studio album by the Swedish band par excellence and the successor to” The Visitors “(1981), includes ten unreleased songs that have divided critics among those who warn of a return”full of vitality“(Rolling Stone), who see in it” a nostalgic journey worth embarking on “(NME) and who consider it”trapped in the past” (The Guardian).

“We have done the best we could at our age“, They said at a press conference in which they also agreed that, upon meeting again,”it seemed that time had not passed”, Although in reality time did a lot of good for them.

The double process of separation that its members had undergone took its toll and the tension was palpable in their last public appearance on the Noel Edmonds show in 1982. They were then promoting their greatest hits, unable to carry out the new songs they had started. , and they were no longer that cool group from the seventies. Very soon after, the separation came.

In the interlude since then, there were solo projects, a successful musical that became a film (twice) and the men’s section came to compose an anthem for Eurovision, a festival that had launched them to world fame in 1974 with “Waterloo”.

The origin of this unexpected album, according to a statement by Ulvaeus from October 2016, is in the virtual tour that will soon turn the quartet into rejuvenated holograms and for which only two new songs had been initially recorded.

Through a pandemic, at the beginning of last September the image of a sun and four planets in darkness finally began to circulate on the internet and on posters posted around the world, a mystery that was solved a few days later, with the announcement that at the end there was a new LP and the premiere of the first two songs.

With an “unmistakably Abba” sound, “I Still Have Faith In You” arrived on the one hand, which returned them to the calm and intimate ballad on the path of “The Winner Takes It All”; on the other, “Don’t Shut Me Down”, in the vivid vibes of disco music, like “Dancing Queen”, but without its hook.

It is true that in just three days 80,000 reserve copies of the album were exceeded (a record equal to that of the show, of which 250,000 tickets have already been sold), but after the initial enthusiasm, its commercial reception was quite regular for a group. with 400 million records sold.

In their own country, the singles had to settle for second place, while in the rest they only achieved a “top 5”, specifically in Germany with a third place, while in the United Kingdom they did not go beyond the fourteenth position.

After finally listening to “Voyage” in full, all opinions -even they themselves have pointed it out- agree that it has been done with their backs to the evolution of pop since the group’s separation in 1982, following only the patterns and the essence of the quartet made up of Anni-Frid Lyngstad (75), Agnetha Fältskog (71), Björn Ulvaeus (76) and Benny Andersson (74).

In that sense, there will be those who enjoy the “naive” and somewhat “hippie” joviality of cuts like “Bumblebee” or “No Doubt About It” and who, however, miss a more modern remix for “Keep And Eye On Dan ”, which in the hands of a current diva would be a fantasy like Madonna did with“ Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! ” in “Hung Up.”

In an almost perfect alternation of slow and vivid themes, they offer a danceable approach to Gaelic folklore (“When You Danced With Me”), they dare with the waltz (“Ode To Freedom”) and even with the Christmas carol (“Little Things” ).

In that conglomerate cohesive by its forms and harmonies, they achieve their best ballad in the middle of the repertoire in “I Can Be That Woman”, a reflection on coexistence as a couple in which the depth and weight of the years is perceived.

“Voyage”, Which will presumably be ABBA’s authentic last album, adds more to the base than to the pinnacle of their legacy. Of course, with its intact ability to turn light into sound, there could be no better time for its return than these death throes of a pandemic that plunged the world into a suffocating and dark confinement.

In these circumstances, listening to them again is like breathing fully from a familiar, friendly and comforting refuge again, to enjoy a sunrise from that privileged balcony with the charm of the old normality.