Philharmonics
Those who fell in love with Agnes Obel’s wistful voice and the somber songs that graced her 2010 *Riverside* EP are sure to succumb to the charms of her debut album *Philharmonics*. Born in Copenhagen (but residing in Berlin), Obel sings beautifully melancholic ballads with breathy and bewitching inflections. “Falling, Catching” is a minute-and-a-half instrumental piano piece that perfectly introduces the stark beauty of “Riverside” before “Brother Sparrow” adds on lightly strummed acoustic guitars and a second vocal track making her singing sound more dusky and mysterious. She turns John Cale’s “Close Watch” into a spectral lullaby akin to Marissa Nadler’s best moments. Standout song “Just So” was featured in a German Deutsche Telekom commercial and in the soundtrack to Thomas Vinterberg’s film *Submarino*. It plays like the album’s centerpiece with a spare architecture of piano, gently plucked strings, and feathery vocal harmonies allowing plenty of room for a big beautiful melody to blossom and wilt before your very ears with a fantastical beauty — like waking up in a fresh snow bank to the sound of sirens singing \"Edelweiss\".
Discover Philharmonics by Agnes Obel released in 2010. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
It’s not hard to muster some gushing verbal diarrhoea of how enchanting, bewitching, and other-worldly Philharmonics sounds but the truth is that with songcraft as subtle and studious as this, its appeal owes more to the melting pot of influences being mined.