Agnes Obel
Vicar Street
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2013
Desmond Traynor
‘Classically trained’ is a phrase to strike fear into the heart of
any popular music fan, and Agnes Obel’s set, in which she plays a grand piano
and sings, accompanied by a cellist and violinist, does start off beset by the
reverence and tension of a formal recital. Chamber music is not the same as
chamber pop. Happily, as when she appeared at this same venue two years ago, the
vibe loosens up as the show progresses, until the talented Danish songstress is
flirting coyly with the audience by the end.
The setlist is nicely
almost evenly divided between 2011’s debut Philharmonics
and the recently released Aventine,
six songs from the former and seven from the latter. To keep things fresh, some
of the older pieces, for example ‘On Powdered Ground’, are presented in
striking new arrangements.
A request to the audience
for a woollen scarf, to act as a mute on the piano strings for the title track
of ‘Aventine’, is the icebreaker, by which time we’re at the halfway point. ‘By
The Riverside’ is dedicated to ‘The Dubliners’, and there are complimentary
remarks about how she always wants to move here whenever she comes here,
because the place is both a city and a village. She even ventures to complain
about the lack of heckling, which was a feature of her past appearances here,
as an appropriate prelude to ‘Words Are Dead’ – which, of course, opens the
floodgates.
As she becomes more
relaxed, it’s possible to see why she wouldn’t have been attracted to pursuing
a career in even contemporary classical music. She’s a songwriter, after all.
That cover of John Cale’s ‘I Keep A Close Watch’ on Philharmonics was a good indication of where she’s coming from, and
going to – although I suspect it’ll be a cold day in hell before she’s chopping
the heads off of chickens. Despite the increasing levity, the musical mood
remains crepuscular, autumnal, haunting: winter is coming.
For encore, she abandons
an attempted rendition of ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ after the first line, unable to
control her laughter after tumbling to the onanistic implications of her
introduction, “This is a song about having a good time by yourself”, in favour
of her cover of Karen Dalton’s ‘Katie Cruel’ (actually a traditional Scottish song,
which also served as her closer at that show two years ago) because, jokingly,
“It’s about alcoholism”. What began with a certain distance and chill and
vaguely stilted, winds up warm and intimate and mildly exuberant.
I know it ain’t
rock’n’roll, but I like it.
Also available at: http://www.state.ie/live-reviews/agnes-obel-dublin-2
No comments:
Post a Comment