Philharmonics

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, somber, 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 favor 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"). 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. - BBC