Abba
graham.rickson
Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 1, Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy Alexandre Kantorow (piano) (BIS)I’d previously encountered pianist Alexandre Kantorow via his exuberant set of Saint-Saëns piano concertos, sparky, lovable performances conducted by his father Jean-Jacques. This solo disc contains weightier repertoire but the Kantorow’s elucidatory abilities prevent things ever getting oppressive; if there’s a more accessible reading of Brahms’s Op. 1 Piano Sonata on disc, I’ve not heard it. Questions of technique don’t arise here, and unless you follow with a score it’s easy to forget how Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The joy of The Hives on record is encapsulated by their 2012 micro-song “Come On”. Despite being one-minute long and consisting solely of the title phrase, it fizzes with righteous, effervescent buzzsaw euphoria. They open their encore with it, showcasing with ease that, whatever the pleasures of their studio output, live in concert is where The Hives truly explode.Clad in regulation black’n’white suits covered in zigzags, they first appear to Chopin’s funeral march and dive straight into “Bogus Operandi” from their most recent album, last year’s The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, from which Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When ABBA split in 1982, Agnetha Fältskog went on to a solo career that was mostly overshadowed by the titanic popularity of her former band. By the 21st century ABBA’s status in pop, especially with the Mamma Mia phenomenon, had become iconic.They were as big as it’s possible to be, now cemented by the continuing success of the holographic Voyage show in London. Fältskog also finally achieved widescale solo recognition and Top 10 chart placings across the world with 2004’s My Colouring Book, an album of covers, and its successor, 2013’s A. Her new album, A+ is a reimagining of the latter Read more ...
Katie Colombus
he first part of one of ABBA’s most famous lyrics, “You can take the future, even if you fail”, has been bought to life in Pudding Mill Lane, in a musical event that has completely re-defined the possibilities of the future of live music – and has put to bed the latter part about failure.Because the band who effectively birthed pop music as we know it today, who embody the idea that "fail" stands for first attempt in learning, who have made generations of people laugh and cry and sing and dance, are here with us in the room. Not exactly in the flesh, but when the screen rises, we are Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Immortality is reserved for monotheistic religions and Marvel superheroes, but in the material world, we also know Abba’s songs are ageless and will not die. After all, they have their Abbatars; we have our abattoirs.Their songs from the Seventies stand as the finest examples of 20th century European sacred music in the popular tradition. Their combination of profound melancholy and joyous uplift reveals itself in song after song. As the decades go by, the power of those uplifting songs of yearning and sadness grows more potent, as if they mean more to you the further away you are from the Read more ...
Owen Richards
Think of the phrase “music memoir”, and you might conjure images of wild nights and heavy mornings. You’re unlikely to think of suburban West Bromwich and tributes to Mike Batt’s Wombles back catalogue. But then, Pete Paphides’s story is comprised of unlikelihoods. What were the chances of one of the country’s leading music critics being the mute son of Greek Cypriot chip shop owners? Broken Greek tracks Paphides’s childhood from four to thirteen. In his early days, he was selectively mute to everyone outside of his family for reasons not quite clear to anyone, including himself. It was Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Abba fans can already have an immersive dining/dancing/singing experience at the O2 in Mamma Mia! The Party, and now, almost as a companion piece, is ABBA: Super Troupers The Exhibition, a show that sets out tell “the story of the band, their music and the era they defined”.That's a pretty tall order and I'm not sure – even as a dedicated fan – that Abba defined an era, but on the other two points this multimedia exhibition makes a decent go of it as it describes the group's history from first meeting to eventual break-up, and beyond.The four – Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Cher. Abba. The Mamma Mia films. If you're not excited by all of the above, I'm afraid we can't be friends. I will not apologise for being thoroughly giddy at the prospect of a Cher album of Abba covers. The Queen of Camp taking on some of the greatest pop songs of all time: it's unashamedly exhilarating.Well, the idea of it was, anyway. In reality, the album is – fine. A bit like a Chinese takeaway, or the finale of Bodyguard, the anticipation has somewhat outweighed the event itself. Dancing Queen opens with its title track. What's immediately striking is that the instrumentation of Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Mamma Mia! has a habit of bursting upon us at crucially restorative moments. The Broadway production opened just after 9/11 and provided necessary balm to a city in shock. Now comes the celluloid prequel of sorts and, lo and behold, what could have been merely a crassly commercial exercise has exactly the right innocence and heart to act as a giddy summer corrective to our coarsened times. One doesn't want to overstate the case for material that ain't deep, but all involved deserve credit for sustaining a buoyancy right through to the genuinely touching finish. And for adding Cher to this Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Its origins as a concept album cling stubbornly to Chess, the Tim Rice collaboration with the male members of ABBA first seen on the West End in 1986 and extensively retooled since then in an ongoing quest to hit the elusive jackpot. Following hot on the heels of a (separate) Washington DC revival earlier this year, Laurence Connor's projection-heavy production, presented in commercial collaboration with the ENO, reminds one of the soaring power of this famously lush score even as one wonders whether the story appended to it will ever fully land. In some ways, Connor's approach here Read more ...
mark.kidel
Carla Bruni delivers smooth and sophisticated pop. She undoubtedly has plenty of talent, and this latest collection of songs – all of them covers, and sung in impressive English – reeks of good taste, careful artistic choices and a wide knowledge of popular music, from which she has drawn material, as she has said, that "blew her away".She is a wide-ranging pop connoisseur, and the tracks run from the Stones’ “I Miss You” to Abba’s “Winner Takes All”, and from Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day” to Willie Nelson’s “Crazy”. The production by hit-maker David Foster is flawless, well suited to the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A neon sign over the Barbican’s Silk Street entrance reads Scandinavian Pain. Following its victory over us in Euro 16, it seems that Iceland is now drenching us with its special brand of melancholy. Things are not that simple, of course. In his work, Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson indulges his penchant for sorrow with such bitter sweetness that, with many a gentle sigh, emotional pain morphs into something more akin to pleasure.In any case, he is hard pressed to distinguish real emotion from its ersatz other, since he was born into an acting dynasty and, as a child, spent many hours Read more ...