As the 9:00pm start time for Saturday night’s sold out Agnes Obel show approached, the bulk of the crowd were surprisingly still waiting in line, literally left out in the cold and wondering what the hold-up was all about. Once everyone was inside and the show was finally underway, Agnes Obel apologized for the delay and explained what had happened. She announced that she and her band would be performing an “extra acoustic set” due to a pool of water that had affected the synthesizer and mellotron prior to the show. Obel didn’t seem to be too put off by the mishap, though she did take a bit of a shot at the venue, noting, “It’s not the Great Hall, it’s the leaky hall.”
Obel and her three piece band sounded fantastic – had she not announced that they were playing a somewhat stripped down set out of necessity, one might have assumed it was an intentional choice. In fact, some of the more impressive moments came not from the instrumentation, but when all four women onstage were harmonizing together. Obel herself may not have agreed, noting later in the set that she didn’t know what was going on with her voice due to a “crazy night” the night before in Ottawa where their bus had frozen over. I certainly didn’t notice any vocal issues though, and I don’t think too many in attendance did either.
Technical difficulties aside, Obel and her band still managed to put on a great performance, with the dark beauty of her compositions coming through clearly in the slightly reworked arrangements.