Agnes
Magic Still Exists

Raise your hand if you remember Agnes, the singer who arrived on our radio frequencies in 2009 with the pleasant "Release Me" only to disappear shortly after from the radar of any listener outside of Sweden. Well, at times I could hardly remember her myself, if not for the magical YouTube algorithm suggesting that very song to me after yet another listen to Jessie Ware. Filled with nostalgia (and lacking something constructive to do), I decided to find out what she had been up to and stumbled upon her latest work, the first released under her independent label. Now, the world is full of pop singers who, after their peak commercial success, decide to go independent to continue making music. Often, this corresponds with pseudo-indie productions that accommodate lackluster writing, sufficiently convoluted to give them a tone of pure and untarnished artists, when the truth is they are worth very little without the army of writers and producers they were accustomed to having behind them. However, it might be that Swedes have an edge in pop music, or that age has led her to make more thoughtful artistic decisions, but the fact remains that, contrary to my expectations, "Magic Still Exists" is an album very focused on sound, lyrics, and ambitions, and is the result of a strong and precise vision: the production, curated by her husband, is perfect and Agnes fits perfectly in the role of Disco priestess in euro-pop style, with a series of catchy tracks that celebrate freedom in all its forms.

After a brief instrumental intro whose title is a true statement of intent ("Spiritual Awakening"), the album kicks off with the robotic choruses of "XX", whose chorus is the manifesto of the entire work (“My brothers and my sisters, praise your existence, X-X-press yourself”), which continues smoothly with the delicate 4/4 pulse of "24 Hours" and, especially, the explosion of synths in "Here Comes the Night", which is fundamentally the best ABBA song never written by ABBA. This can be said about much of the album, for better or worse: the Stockholm quartet is constantly honored but never poorly plundered, as the arrangements, both vintage and fresh, combined with the hostess's grit and personality as she floats over the keyboards with her dark contralto, give the work a well-defined identity that never becomes cloying. However, in general, those who have never tolerated the glitter and strobe lights of "Gimme Gimme Gimme" and "Super Trouper" will hardly find this album to their taste. It should also be noted that the album's flow is somewhat hindered by a series of interludes that have little reason to exist. Intended to convey the sensation of being in the midst of a religious ceremony officiated by the Donna Summer of the moment, in practice, they are repetitive and redundant, as they are merely spoken extensions of parts of other songs meant to emphasize the album's core themes but ultimately just unnecessarily break the track list. The cacophonic "Selfmade" is also unconvincing, nodding to voguing and starting off decently, but losing its way halfway through by becoming unnecessarily repetitive. However, the album redeems itself at the end with the pleasant "Fingers Crossed" and especially with the title track, a nostalgic litany sung with conviction over an elegant piano base, which in its simplicity represents the perfect closure to bring your feet back to the ground after the Disco intoxication of the previous songs.

Not bad for someone who started by churning out unpretentious euro-pop pieces in the early years of her career and now seems to have found an artistic raison d'être, albeit with evident room for improvement. It remains to be seen whether Agnes will be able to reap the benefits of her musical rebirth and produce the album she is clearly capable of conceiving, given the good premises, or if she will fall victim to it like other more illustrious names before her. Perhaps starting with the elimination of the most superfluous tracks in the tracklist of her future works, which would already be a big step forward.