In the midst of her first tour of the US, Berlin pianist Agnes Obel was gracious enough to sit down with melophobe to discuss that milestone, why there is an owl on Philharmonics' cover, and the time period she would like to live in most. Read on.
melophobe: So, you’ve been very busy this week with the beginning of the tour on the West Coast and a recording on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic.
Agnes Obel: Yes, it was nice. I’ve done a couple of radio shows in Europe, but this was relaxed and had nice sound. It was my first time in L.A.
melophobe: Congratulations on your new album. Sounds like it’s doing phenomenally in Europe, and was also received well in the United States. Is this your first time playing shows here?
Agnes Obel: This is my first time in the U.S. It was just released here. I don’t know if it was planned to be released here. But everything has been like that; just one thing leads to another. And then we got a lot of interest in the album so we released it here as well, and in Canada. But, yeah, it’s my first tour here.
melophobe: What do you think of Portland so far?
Agnes Obel: It’s really livable and beautiful, I really like it very much. It’s really weird how you go from LA and San Francisco, and then Portland – how it changes, you know?
melophobe: The geography changes quite a bit, yes; from desert and concrete and suddenly to lush green forests.
Agnes Obel: I really am a tree lover; that’s a natural thing for me, so Portland is my favorite so far.
melophobe Well, that’s great to hear. We’re very proud of our city – it’s also very music-rich.
Agnes Obel: Yeah, I noticed that the audiences here --- like at the Timber Timbre concert at Mississippi Studios last night, it was a very good audience. I can tell a lot of music lovers live here. It made a good impression on me.
melophobe: Let’s talk about your album for a minute. I’ve listened to it from beginning to end several times, and find it infinitely listenable. I don’t want to skip through any songs, nor do I tire of any of it. It seems that it something you worked on painstakingly for years. Is that true, or is it something you sort of put together in haste just to get it out there, and it ended up just sort of being accidentally brilliant?
Agnes Obel: I’ve been writing these piano songs for a long time. But I had other projects before, like, I played in a band, but I have always had these piano songs I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t know if it belonged to any genre. I was unsure and didn’t know if it was something I could record, but of course I could record it… I don’t know why I thought that for a long time, but then I moved to Berlin and I didn’t know anybody so I didn’t have any projects or distractions. So I started to record, and in the process I started to write new songs because it was a really good time for me and I got a lot of ideas. It was the first time I really tried to work on my own and focus and have the ability to do a really long recording session on my own over half a year. So, it has been a long time, but the recording process wasn’t that long. It’s been so different from anything else I’ve ever done. I can’t really compare it.
melophobe: Is the album exactly what you wanted?
Agnes Obel: I have a tendency to be very perfectionist, so I can always find faults of course, but I got somebody to post-produce some of the songs after my own recording, and then I found out I didn’t like it at all. It was too much. So I went back to the sound I did myself. It wasn’t something I planned on, it just came along. So it hasn’t really been a conceptual album, but I somehow had an idea about it… I wanted the production to be minimalistic and transparent.
melophobe I think that’s the greatest thing about the album is it’s not overproduced. You hold it back from that, which was smart.
Agnes Obel: It felt really wrong when the songs got this extra layer, and it got mixed by a really good mixer, but the special thing about it is this purity, and that’s why I like doing it all myself.
melophobe: It’s really good that you did that, I think that’s why it’s such a special album.
Agnes Obel: Although if you like harmonies and melodies and songs with a lot of melodic structure… you don’t need to enhance it with a lot of instruments and sound effects. Of course, you can do that, but there’s a danger of it becoming too romantic. It’s good to just let things be what they are. Don’t be afraid, or hide it away. When you’re doing it yourself, you tend to want to hide you own voice [laughs].
melophobe: What’s the owl in the promo shots about?
Agnes Obel: We thought about how to represent the music. And it’s really difficult to represent something audible with something visual. And especially if you don’t know what kind of genre you’re doing, you need to find your own visual language. Do you know The Birds, the Hitchcock film? There’s a great still from that movie with Tippi Hedron and the raven and the wings. They’re beautiful and very simplistic. The house where I recorded, there’s a huge room with big green walls… and we just found the bird and the taxidermist.
melophobe: Oh, it’s taxidermy… I don’t know why I thought it was real.
Agnes Obel: Well, we used it because it looked alive. It was something from nature, something wild. And it was a night animal. There were a lot of things that were good about it.
melophobe: The picture of you and the owl side by side make you think there’s a meaningful comparison, like a mirror effect going on.
Agnes Obel: [Laughs] That wasn’t really the intention, but I can see that now. It’s getting a little ridiculous actually. Next time it’s going to be a dog, because my boyfriend says I look a little like a dog…I don’t know, because of my long hair [Laughs].
melophobe: You can use that one for your upcoming joke album, right?
Agnes Obel: [Laughs] Yeah.
melophobe: “I Keep a Close Watch” is originally by John Cale. Are the rest of the songs on Philharmonics solely your compositions?
Agnes Obel: Yes, that’s the only one.
melophobe: Are you playing to large crowds in Europe, or is it like here, where you are still relatively unknown?
Agnes Obel: It depends which country. France is the biggest for me. It’s a surprise. I don’t speak French or anything. Maybe it’s because of the classical music. They also like Timber Timbre a lot. But of course here we start from nowhere. But it’s nice, in a really relaxed way, to play for people who have never heard the music before.
melophobe: Tonight you’re playing with The California Guitar Trio; do you usually play with other classical acts?
Agnes Obel: No, I didn’t even know they were playing until today, but it sounds like it’ll be a good fit. I usually support rock and indie rock bands.
melophobe: Have you been playing piano since you were a kid, or did you pick it up as an adult?
Agnes Obel: Since I was a kid. It’s very good for me because I am, how do you say…lazy?
melophobe: Good that you stuck with it. I played piano in high school then dropped out of lessons because it wasn’t very cool.
Agnes Obel: It’s not very cool [laughs].
melophobe: I bought a bass guitar and aspired to be in a punk band.
Agnes Obel: That is very cool. I’ve always liked classical music, which is definitely not cool, but yeah, it’s all relative.
melophobe: I saw Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight in Paris, the other day. It’s about a writer who is sort of obsessed with bygone eras, specifically Paris in the 1920’s; the heyday of artists and writers like Ernest Hemmingway, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and Salvador Dali. So, relating to that idea, if you could live in any other time period, which would it be?
Agnes Obel: Probably the 1920’s, too, because I live in Berlin, and Berlin in the 1920’s was a fantastic time as well. And then maybe in the 1960’s. In the 70’s something changes, the innocence disappears and I’m not so crazy about it. But Berlin in the 20’s had a big transvestite and homosexual community, cabaret culture, it was very avant garde.
melophobe: Is there anything that people like me are writing or saying about your music that is either not true, or, is there anything we’re not recognizing in your music that you’re trying to communicate?
Agnes Obel: There are very different responses I get from country to country. Some people say it’s very sad, but I don’t feel that so much. I was not in a sad place with this album. I don’t feel a deep sadness when I’m playing. I feel very alive and very happy. It’s something very positive for me; it’s like a nice escapism in my life. I don’t have a deep pain I’m trying to express. I can understand that assumption though, with the switching of the minor and major in the harmonics. But I don’t see that there’s this sadness like I hear in other music. And it’s not that I don’t love it or anything, it’s really powerful, and I admire people who can sing about their pain, but that’s not what I was doing with this album.
melophobe: Thanks for letting me speak with you today.
Agnes Obel: Thank you.