Agnes Obel, Birmingham Town Hall - review
It was the day on which Britain's favourite Emily Bronte-quoting purveyor of whimsy, Kate Bush, was getting bearded Mojo-readers in a froth by declaring her undying love for - wait for it - a Tory Prime Minister.
Who would have thought the latest rock star to cause such a knicker-twisting controversy would be a 58-year-old, isolationist woman.
And yet closer to home, Danish singer/songwriter Agnes Obel was channelling the spirit of Bush to warm cold winter nights at Birmingham's sumptuous Town Hall.
Obel is one part Bush, one part Rachmaninov; one part Bjork, another Ludovico Einaudi. She replaces the neurosis and other-worldly eccentricity of the likes of Bush and Tori Amos with an egalitarian pop classicism.
Supported by an exquisite three-piece band that played cello, mellotron, percussion and ukulele, the multi-award-winning, pan-Europe star brought sons from her three albums – Philharmonics, Aventine and the new Citizen of Glass – to a hushed and appreciative audience.
Obel is a fascinating artist. Her influences are such French composers as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Erik Satie, with a soupcon of Nina Simone and Francoise Hardy. And yet it is such non-musicians as the writer Edgar Allan Poe and the photographer/film-makers Robert Mapplethorpe and Alfred Hitchcock who inform her work equally.
The result is music that is profound and disarming; that is deep and engagingly complex. Her thoroughly modern classic-rock crossover is enigmatic and experimental; it is simultaneously simple and sophisticated.
An enchanting and enthralling evening of show-stopping, piano-led pop experimentation delighted a full house at Birmingham Town Hall.
Melodious and remarkable, intense and featuring truly dazzling, four-part vocal harmonies; Obel's headline was an evening for the connoisseur.
She is a world-class performer who blazed like a comet on a freezing winter night.
By Andy Richardson
