What are you listening to? (Vol VII)

Girl meets piano, mellow and very nice. I did play it in the car on one of our concert trips recently. I have a ticket to see her next week at Bush Hall.

Such is the exceptionally sparse nature of Agnes Obel’s debut album that it slips by almost unnoticed lest you lend it a distraction-free, focused ear. It is highly advisable you do so: the compositions that lie within are slow, sombre, sepulchral even, but not without a sense of occasionally singular beauty. A case in point is Riverside, which follows the instrumental Falling, Catching as the first song proper. Entirely built around piano and voice, its soft pleas for solitude and escape are utterly disarming, Obel’s mournful lyric as chilled as the body of water she’s inexplicably drawn to.

Philharmonics is a resolutely early hours affair; a kind of Scandinavian counterpart to the British duo Felix’s wonderful You Are the One I Pick of last year. But where that record generally eschewed structure in favour of dark flights into the surreal, Obel keeps things tight and lean here. Such elements as percussion and auxiliary instrumentation rarely impinge on these songs, and when they do it is sometimes difficult to tell (one notable exception being her meditative cover of John Cale’s I Keep a Close Watch, here simply titled Close Watch).

Oddly for an album that dabbles in such twilit, shadowy waters, it supplied communications giant Deutsche Telekom with music for their recent advertising campaign in Germany, which is where the Copenhagen-born Obel now resides. Just So is the track in question, and while its bright melodies and straightforward lyrics sit at odds with the surrounding, songs like this and Brother Sparrow do furnish Philharmonics some much-needed lightness.

Elsewhere, the title-track engages and unsettles in equal measure, returning to the theme of inescapable tides that opened the album (its first line is particularly striking – "Guess who died last night," Obel coos), while Over the Hill is probably the most traditionally pretty song at a slight three minutes. Obel’s sedative tones are the constant, and though Philharmonics’ deliberate arrangements veer close to the lugubrious at times, they’re capable of some genuinely mesmeric turns.

Half of the title track - I Trawl the Megahertz (11/22 mins) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_uV_vypH0o from Paddy McAloon's first solo album in 2003. If you look on YT other tracks are available like the beautiful Sleeping Rough & Ineffable. I'd like to find a cheaper copy than amazons asking price.

This was played (very low) before Blackfield came on stage @ Leamington Spa on Wed night. A great venue, just imagine a larger version of Bush Hall, with 900 capacity.

Denis

A great sax player and his quintet paying tribute to the greatest ever.   Superb effort!

Cheers

Flettster

I agree....

Larry

Cheers

Flettster

Gorgeous harmonies & superb production makes this a wonderful album.

Cheers

Flettster

This makes me want to attempt to play folk music again.

Very tasteful mastering too.

Gaspard de la Nuit.

Starting with Schumann's Toccata.

Kina Grannis - "Stairwells". She's only young, but she can write a tune and I really like her voice, plus the sound quality is awesome. One of the best i've heard, with real weight and scale to  instruments which are allowed their own space in a vast dark soundstage.