Album Review: Agnes Obel, Citizens of Glass

Violins are often an afterthought, usually applied with chart success in mind. Not so for Agnes Obel. The strings on the Danish-born, Berlin-based chanteuse’s third album, Citizen Of Glass, are an intrinsic part of the record, so much so that it’s impossible to consider these songs without them.

Indeed, Obel’s oeuvre depends on the instrumentation she uses, from the sparse piano to the sumptuous, yet never overdone, string section. Album opener ‘Stretch Your Eyes’ is the perfect calling card: five minutes of exquisite, restrained beauty, with gorgeous, lilting vocals and the gentlest of strings ululating behind the melody.

Her writing owes a debt to classical music. The exquisite ‘Familiar’ comes across like chamber pop, particularly as the male vocals trade lyrics with Obel’s own, while the baroque Americana of ‘Stone’, at once fragile and powerful, is like a newborn puppy with a knuckle- duster.

The yearning piano and gorgeous smoky vocal of ‘It’s Happening Again’ has a late night jazzy feel, as smooth and sensual as a late night love-in, while the glacial piano of ‘Mary’ recalls Tori Amos at her loveliest.

Obel’s voice is a thing of beauty, whether it’s soaring and swooping on the title track, or coming at you from all angles on the multi-tracked choral majesty of ‘Golden Green’. For the most part, however, her tones are dreamy, sensual and ethereal, so much so that some tracks, like ‘Trojan Horses’, can blend into the background if you allow them. But it’s worth paying attention, as the devil really is in the detail, especially on the two instrumentals, the hauntingly lovely ‘Grasshopper’, complete with pizzicato strings, and the gorgeous ‘Red Virgin Soil’.

The title refers to the German concept of the gläserner bürger – the level of privacy the individual has in a state or how much we know about a person’s biology, the idea being that the more open and ‘made of glass’ someone is, the better. Obel reckons she has opened up as an artist on this record. For this listener, there’s still a level of obliqueness to these songs, but that only renders them more beautiful, beguiling and mysterious.