AUSTIN, TEXAS – As echoes of a rock band playing only 100 yards away spilled over into their performance, Agnes Obel and her classically tinged chamber-pop band proudly stuck to their role as the antithesis of the South by Southwest Music Conference.
Their music was hushed, ornate, full of nuance and gradual in its majesty — all qualities that typically go over as well as a salad bar at SXSW, but will be perfectly served when they hit one of Minnesota's best listening rooms, the Cedar Cultural Center, next Wednesday.
"It's almost impossible for me to play South by Southwest," Obel admitted while in Austin last week, listing off the lack of adequate soundcheck times (harder with string instruments) and the fact that her band was using recording loops, which pick up all the extraneous noise.
Despite all that, the Danish singer/songwriter and her all-woman ensemble earned a very favorable response when we caught them outside Austin's Clive Bar, which was hardly a typical SXSW party. Thanks in part to the fact that filmmaker David Lynch once did a remix of one of her songs, Obel got invited to play Showtime's promotional party for "Twin Peaks," with star Kyle MacLachlan in attendance and the hot indie-rock band Real Estate for headliners.
That the 36-year-old Copenhagen native would commit to SXSW at all illustrates the sense of adventurism she puts into her music.
"I really like to come into a circumstance where my music is very different from all the other music," she said two days after the Showtime party, relishing a down moment in her hotel's coffee bar, where her icy blue eyes matched her casual, grayish-blue jeans.
"I love to break down all the ideas of what type of artist I am. Especially in Denmark, they get mad if I play a big festival. They expect me to always play in a church somewhere or some sit-down venue."
Obel's latest record, "Citizen of Glass," disrupted if not outright defied expectations based on two prior albums going back to 2010's "Philharmonics," which earned her platinum-record status across much of Europe. Her intricate and dramatic writing style, elegant, falsetto-equipped voice and knack for looped, ambient sonic layers put her somewhere between JoAnna Newsom, Bon Iver and yMusic among contemporary music innovators.
Primarily a pianist by trade, she wrote a lot of the new album using older keyboard instruments such as a spinet and celesta instead of a standard piano. The intent, she said, was "to create new sounds that did not come off as beautiful as they would on piano."
Heart of 'Glass'
Obel also created a conceptually themed album for the first time. The title, "Citizen of Glass," comes from a German legal term about an individual's level of privacy. It's also a medical term about how much we know about a person's body.
She thought it could also be applied to a songwriter such as herself or other artists who often expose their innermost emotions.
"I thought it was a really beautiful image and could identify with it," she explained. "I use my personal life as material and expose things in my music that I don't ever tell people about in conversation. I know what it's like to feel transparent."
Early on in the new record, Obel warns of "the mask of a million ruling eyes" in the delicate and haunting track "Familiar." In the more urgent and triumphal "Trojan Horses," she sings, "These bare bones are made of glass / See-through to the marrow when they pass / Seek through the keyhole, a fate is cast / Deep in the mirror smiling back."
When she was nearly finished writing the record, Obel found another interpretation of the title after her dad, also a musician, died suddenly following a long battle with depression.
"It seemed like a fitting title because he was such a fragile guy, like a glass figure that could break," she said, but stopped short of saying the album was influenced by the tragedy. "I was still in shock. It was way too close to it happening to write about it."
"I decided I didn't want to make an album about him or his death, but I felt a really strong urge to make music because of it. Music seemed really important, and everything else seemed irrelevant."
Her pursuit of music is part of what prompted Obel to leave home in Denmark and relocate to Berlin a decade ago, where she said she found "a lot more spaces for musicians and artists" and "an inspiring mix of people from all over." Talking the same day German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with President Donald Trump at the White House, she noted some sharp differences in touring America as an international act in recent months.
"Everybody is worried if they can even get into the country," she said. "It's very tense. And everything is political. Even when you say something you didn't intend to be political, the audience will interpret it that way."
At the same time, Obel also discussed feeling at home when she drives through the American Midwest on tour, where she sees many traces of Danish and other Scandinavian immigrants.
"I played the city in Wisconsin called Stoughton where everything was Norwegian, that was really enjoyable to me," she enthused. "I'll see wooden houses driving around and I'll think, 'This looks like Scandinavia.' And people there will tell me they have relatives in Denmark or Norway."
Another reason Obel should feel a lot more at home at the Cedar next week than she did in Austin last week.
Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658
Agnes Obel
With: Ethan Gruska.
When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.
Where: Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Av. S., Mpls.
Tickets: $20, all ages, eTix.com.
