Agnes Obel, Shepherd's Bush Empire

Agnes Obel didn’t choose music. ‘The music chose me.’ It’s a grandiloquent statement for someone whose forte is in writing melodies striking for their quiet simplicity, as you’ll appreciate when she plays her upcoming concert in London at the Shepherd's Bush Empire on 22 October.
Accompanied by a cellist, Obel sits at her piano playing twilit, haunted music: similar to Amélie-era Yann Tiersen in its lustrous beauty. It would be easy to characterise Obel’s music as the easy listening of the singer-songwriter-pianist niche. But she doesn’t have the spunk of Regina Spektor, or the intensity of Alicia Keys. Instead, her music is remoter; rarefied. Obel is classically orientated: you can find Debussy or Satie in her second album Aventine (September 2013).
The album is a collection of impressionistic compositions, not dissimilar to her debut Philharmonics (which is certified gold in Denmark). Aventine is not named for the Roman hill that shares its name. ‘If I chose this name it's just because I like the way it rings,’ says Obel. This is key to understanding her music. Obel uses her voice more as an instrument than as a conduit for meaning: though her lyrics, as far as they go, are lovely in a picture-painting sort of way. Obel’s dusky voice curls around the clear notes of the piano, sometimes chiming in for a harmony with her cellist. Chord, Left, the opening track on Aventine, ensnares listeners with its uneasy lull. Strings, taking centre stage in title-track ‘Aventine’, dart around the of Obel’s strains.
Expect sorcery on 22 October. Obel will summon a wintry landscape perfect for the darkening evenigs: elm smoke, mist-filled wood, moon lust.