Venue:
QPAC Concert Hall Brisbane
Date: 17/09/2026
First time of seeing Ms Obel, worse, I was accompanied by 5 others, including Mrs Druff who’d never heard a note of her music. How to describe Agnes – classical, jazz, pop ? You will be engrossed, enthralled, spellbound I lied. Tickets were reasonably priced so I was expecting a solo Agnes rather than band for some reason. As it was she was accompanied by a talented bunch of musos – a Japanese lady on keyboards, a cellist from Germany, who used loop and effect pedals, which was a first for me, and a Swiss geezer on percussion. Set list
Red Virgin Soil
Fuel To Fire
Camera’s Rolling
The Meaning Of Flowers
Laymelli
Familiar
Run Cried The Crawling
Faustian Deal
Gemini
Never Been
Blood So Red
Stretch Your Eyes
Riverside
The Curse
The audience:
Engrossed, enthralled, spellbound
It made me think..
Didn’t play too much from the new one, but I’ll purchase asap.
We saw her at the Old Museum in Brisbane back in 2014. We were engrossed, enthralled, spellbound. I’m enjoying the new one.
My copy of the new arrived yesters. Only a quick dog walking listen thus far, but very promising. A little more inward feeling than the recent albums, with more/lots of that vocal pitch shifting she first found on Myopia. Impenetrable lyrics to the extent I thought she was possibly singing in Danish or German, or possibly Elizabeth Frazer/Lisa Gerrard neolinguistics, with then the surprise of a lyric sheet to reveal the English seemingly used.
I’ve listened online and wondered if the lyrics had been subjected to online translation however.
Obel is singing in English—and the lyrics are poetic, when you decipher them—but most of the time you would struggle to recognize their origin, with only the rare phrase raising its head from the soup. Shorn of language, much of the music’s emotional impact relies on the vocal melodies.
I can’t find where I borrowed this from.
Interesting. My wife complained she couldn’t hear / understand the lyrics, and another companion was convinced she was singing in Danish. I struggle to make them out on her cd’s. Doesn’t bother me, her voice is an instrument – I also use the Liz Fraser / Cocteau’s analogy.
I forget who posted a video of a track from Agnes’s new album but thank you. In the last few weeks I have purchased all her albumss 5 or is it 6 with ‘Flowers’? Anyhow all of them have received several plays including the latest, one word to describe what I hear exquisitely sublime, OK that’s two. I’m not going to attempt to attach a genre to her music that would be impossible. Thanks to others this year I’ve come across 3 or 4 artists for the first time who’ve been around a while obviously Agnes Obel is one of them.
There’s an hour of live Agnes Obel from French radio over on 100 Greatest Bootlegs.
https://100greatestbootlegs.blogspot.com/
Just posted on YouTube is the ARTE concert from June 2026….