Yelena Eckemoff - Rosendals Garden IV
"ABBA Museum" (L & H Productions, 2025)
The fourth single release from her soon-to-be-released Rosendals Garden is a special homage to both a building and a band. “ABBA Museum.” It celebrates both the museum building, at Djurgårdsvägen 68, 115 21 Stockholm, Sweden, and the vocal quartet ABBA, whose string of recordings in the 1970s helped to define the Disco Era, and who remain active over 50 years later. “Her” is Yelena Eckemoff, composer of the collection making up Rosendals Garden, soon to be released in March 2026.
Eckemoff calls upon drummer Morgan Ågren to set up a gentle rock beat over which Svante Henryson plays cello, mimicking the phrasing of many ABBA hits. Eckemoff composed her “earworm” to do what earworms do, remain and be remembered. In doing so, she wanted to address the song craft of the groups and her reaction to it. This is a tuneful, progressive, and inviting piece of music that captures the spirit of the late 1970s in brilliant twenty-first century fashion.
“Within the walls of the ABBA museum, we noticed just how widely and enthusiastically ABBA’s music is still accepted, not only by die-hard fans, but by the younger generations, too. Its rhythm still beats and its life still breathes, like a musical giant benevolently faced toward the future.”
How can one knock that spirit?