Back light
Agnes Obel's music came into my life thanks to one of my visits to Belgium. The life experiences may be reflected in our souls loaded with little details that make them even more intense, and the debut album of Agnes Obel, Philharmonics (PIAS, 2010), came to me like rain after an extremely hot day. The next morning, the air was fresh, new, free of charge despite their gloomy compositions, at times against the light, but always beautiful, extremely beautiful.
Agnes Obel was born in Denmark but she has developed much of her career in Berlin. She released a first EP Riverside which served as a prelude to her first album in which she showed her poetry in the shade as a place to appreciate the light in its true dimension. She began playing the piano as a kid and soon developed a huge talent for songwriting.
Philharmonics is mostly developed at piano leaving to her beautiful voice the main role of her melodies emerged from a kind of water world and the moments where light rides in no-man’s land, where the sunrise and the sunset live, always more substantial in time in northern latitudes. From the piano starting of Falling, Catching and a wonder of Celtic airs Riverside, used as an advance of the album, her vocal warmth contrasts with the cold landscapes that she describes. She’s melancholy in Brother Sparrow and profoundly shocking in Just so, the faraway look that she shows us on the album’s cover is removed for each note found on her music. She is sublime in Beast, curiously, the most hopeful of her tunes, in a bright clean sound. "Let's go tonight, to let the beast run wild with the dogs and the cattle, let's go. I know you said it's like a heel to the head, or a girl in your bed and in your arms. For the butter on your bread, for the dying and the dead, turning cheeks for your network, let's go”. To let go is here a way of hope for a life full of absurd obscurities. Passion is a door. When it is closed is our death but open fills our veins of the beat of life. Then, a waltz sounds. It’s the title track, Philharmonics, and you wish to dance with the night until the morning light leaves us completely naked and alone in front the world alone because at night "now we are free".
And I’m finally on my own Over the hill seeing the sunset while I feel the poetry of her songs. “Over the hill I will be waiting for you I won't pretend that you don't mean nothing to me. Come now, come now, come back now, come back now. The doubt will creep and crawl in on you. The dark can leap and fall upon you. Come back now, come back now. Let it be, let it go, let it fall, let it blow. Let it come, let it go, let it fall, we will know”. And time curves in my ignorance.
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo courtesy of Agnes Obel