Myopia

Agnes Obel - Myopia
Critic Score
Based on 9 reviews
2020 Ratings: #537 / 871
User Score
Based on 292 ratings
2020 Rank: #309
Liked by 23 people
February 21, 2020 / Release Date
LP / Format
Blue Note / Label
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CRITIC REVIEWS

80
God Is in the TV

Agnes Obel is one of these rare musicians nowadays that has a unique and sophisticated identity and yet continues to experiment within those myopic boundaries.

80
The Independent

This is an album to experience alone, and there’s a comfort to being pulled into ‘Myopia’s’ contemplative, isolating territory.

71
Pitchfork

The Danish songwriter’s ghostly chamber pop experiments form their own foggy landscape, inviting you into a creeping mist where vocals and piano smear together.

70
musicOMH

There are many joys to be found within its brittle, opaque sounds but it’s undoubtedly an album that must be lived with for an appropriate length of time for these to fully surface.

70
AllMusic

It's elegant, regal even, yet so immersed in its icy solitude that the listener is often left looking for cracks in the facade instead of common ground.

70
No Ripcord

Obel's work has indeed grown denser with time and experience, though not without dismissing the openness in which her music functions.

Doublez
75

As she has always known how to do, her new album Myopia is delicious from the first note and the rest until the end. The Danish singer-songwriter has struck again. Even if we are not at the same level as her previous prowess, Myopia is a baroque pop/folk album that as usual really pulls classical music and remains a very good effort.

If the orchestration is very meticulous, it is of an absolute tenderness and radiant purity. You're not really here for the explosions, in the sense of ... read more

WildChameleon
70

This is a beautiful album but she is recycling her previous work rather than build around like she did with citizen of glass

SongOfTheFens
80

Agnes Obel is an artist of mood.

Her debut "Philharmonics" revels in it’s brooding simplicity, Obel pairs her wistful voice with a single guitar or piano as you wander through neverending, yet familiar halls. The broader chamber instrumentation of "Aventine" burns hot, as you search desperately for its light in heavy stygian black. The manipulated vocals and vitreous violins refracting across crystalline walls disorients you, lost forever as a "Citizen of ... read more

Thalassophoneus
92

For me, Myopia probably marks the full maturity of Agnes Obel's work and her final breakout from the "beautiful piano and cello" trope.

More pluralistic and more prone to sound editing than ever, Obel has mastered her technique in overlapping different melodic layers like glass panes, where melodic refractions constantly jump out of each other.

Although she remains subtle and serene as always, she is by no means minimalistic. One will hear an environment of decorations including ... read more

holsgr
30

questionable (★★☆☆☆)

EthanW
70

I think it would be hard to argue that this album is anything besides beautiful. Everything seems to mesh so well, and this is a perfect example of using your voice as an instrument. However, this album just feels so slow. I mean it's not the worst, these 40 minutes didn't feel like a lifetime, but it still felt longer than 40 minutes. I don't think there's anything wrong with that necessarily, but maybe this album just isn't my speed. Still a good project though, and I can see its inner beauty.

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Added on: October 29, 2019