Abba: Voyage review – full-on and frothy

(Polydor)
The return of the Swedish super troupers has plenty of bittersweet erudition, plus a good dollop of mass-market cheese

Nearly 40 years after their break-up, Abba's reunion album upholds the contradictory legacy of the very first Swedish pop powerhouse. Half of this record finds hatchet-burying divorces Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Faltskog and Bjorn Ulvaeus returning as titans of emotionally literate pop. There are songs here with a cinematographic grasp of gesture allied to countermelodies of aching prettiness, almost casually thrown away. In the very same breath, though, Voyage packs in a surfeit of hokey oompah and two Christmas tunes too many. The saccharine children's choir on Little Things is an inevitability; cynically, Andersson and Ulvaeus probably wanted a slice of the never-ending fruited royalty pudding that comes with Christmas-themed songs.

In short, Voyage is an album that asks: Which Abba are you - frothy or full-on?" as you hit the skip button. But you'll be glad Abba made it. Both a monument to bittersweet pop erudition and a mass-market sop, it finds all four singers in strong voice, their effortless harmonies evidence of much water having flowed under Stockholm's bridges, interpersonally speaking.