What’s the verdict on ABBA’s first album in 40 years?
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For many fans, it’s safe to say absence does makes the heart grow fonder.
“It’s ARRIVED with only 40 years delayed,” one fan tweeted, while another said: “HAPPY VOYAGE DAY!!!”
Another commentator wrote: “It’s no pop classic, but it has some beautiful ABBA flourishes. The voices are just beautiful – Benny & Björn have deliberately avoided using modern overly produced vocals, but some of the lyrics are twee. However, it’s polished, inoffensive and a grower. A fitting final farewell.”
Another fan added on Twitter: “The most remarkable thing about Voyage is that it’s new ABBA that’s still perfectly ABBA after all these years, but you haven’t heard it a thousand times yet.”
Among music critics, however, opinion was more divided.
He wrote: “Voyage is the rare post-reformation album to build upon the band’s legacy without abandoning what we loved about their classic records in the first place. That makes Voyage a surprisingly necessary trip into the present from a band who could have coasted on the warm fumes of adulation ad infinitum.”
He added that while Fältskog and Lyngstad “can still hold a tune,” Andersson and Ulvaeus “have not lost their ability to craft a flowing melody adorned with glittering hooks.”
“Rather than reflecting poignantly on the past, much of the rest of Voyage feels terminally stuck there,” she wrote, before branding “Little Things”, a Christmas song, a “big crime against sense, sentimentality and sequencing.”
