Agnes Obel
Album: Aventine
Label: Play It Again Sam
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.agnesobel.com

Now hear this. I mean it, you need to hear this, now! Frequently accompanied only by a single cellist, this classically trained Danish pianist has created a quiet storm of a sophomore album to follow up the lush arrangements of her 2010 debut Philharmonics.

Where that album enthralled and lured its listeners with a warm update of baroque pop, this set is much more sparse, skeletal, cold even. A response to the whirlwind that followed in the wake of her debut release, this is the sound of disorientation, abstraction and exhaustion.

But in a good way.

Mika Posen of Timber Timbre warms things up with violin and viola on the delicately poised single The Curse and is joined by guitarist Robert Kondorossi from Budzillus on the yearning Pass Them By.

Run Cried The Crawling boasts pizzicato strings to launch a thousand Ultravox tributes, while Fuel On Fire sounds like a world-weary sigh at the end of another difficult day, the song's structure all but melting away into an illusion of mechanical, melancholy soundscape.

This is mood music for moderns, thoroughly mysterious, underscored with sadness, quiet, effective and impressively precise. Time to put another log on the fire.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk