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Saturday 16 April 2011

Gigs - Agnes Obel - The Deaf Institute


Star rating – 6/10

I love taking a chance and going to see someone I haven’t really heard much of at great small venues like The Deaf Institute. And when I got there I realised that I had actually seen Agnes Obel before last autumn supporting I Am Kloot. Not to worry.

She is an accomplished pianist, and her fellow musician was great on the cello, and various other instruments besides. The arrangements of her songs, she mainly performs her own work, were very good, and their voices clear and pure. Obel doesn’t sparkle like she otherwise might though as I don’t think that most of her songs are strong enough – simple as that.

She did a couple of instrumental numbers, but the ones that stood out for me were ‘Riverside’ and ‘Just So’ which have also been released as singles, and are featured on her 2010 CD ‘Philharmonics’. She is Danish but based in Germany, and her music does sound very Scandinavian – like a backing track from ‘Wallender’. It must be difficult to write and perform in a language which is not your native tongue, and on some of the songs it took a few moments to work out what language she was actually singing in.

So not a fantastic night, but a good night, which certainly won’t deter me from taking a chance on going to see live music from up and coming, or not as the case may be, musicians in future.

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