Childbirth, Violence and Peace - Agnes Obel's The Meaning of Flowers, Echoes October CD of the Month

You might want to go back to school, or at least the library to grasp all the literary influences on Agnes Obel’s 5th album, The Meaning of Flowers. Erudition is not always on display with musicians. But Agnes Obel draws upon a wealth of literature ancient and modern to comprise the inspiration for her songs. It’s never a direct quote, but deployed in an illusory way for songs that seem to have come out of the forgotten bowels of a church. The voices are mysterious, the words not always intelligible and the weight of years arises from them. That is the sound of Obel’s first album in 6 years. Which makes it seem complex, but it’s really beautifully composed with melodies that stay with your memory like an ecstatic high.

Obel’s last album, Myopia, was released in 2020. With that time frame, you know the pandemic is part of this album, but there was also something else, the birth of her first child Inana. Right from that name you can tell she’s scrolling through ancient texts to come up with the Mesopotamian goddess of childbirth, sexuality, love and war.

Inana figures directly into the song, “Blood So Red.” It explores childbirth, but as a violent, painful experience, but the music is actually one of the brightest tracks on the album, played in a major key with a lively percussion track. She even has castanets. But Obel’s lyrics speak of near-death.

Just so red, cut me out
Just so red, she calls me out
He was just so brave
Just to hold her head
Two souls, one chain
Uh what, what if we never make it?

In a sharp contrast, the title track, “The Meaning of Flowers” opens with talk of a new life following the birth of her daughter. It’s built around a simple four note arpeggio across which Obel drapes haunted choirs, plucked harp and the occasional waterphone as she sings abstractly of the birth. “I would see you there, you know, a miracle” is the chorus as Obel’s voice bends both naturally and electronically into eddies of melisma. “Do what you like, I relate,” sings Obel. “Don’t worry about how the road bends down

So easy to forget the light
And return to essence
So fluorescent”
So giving birth was apparently worth it.

At their core, Obel’s songs are extremely simple. Pretty much every track is based on a simple keyboard motif, usually piano. Yet the way she places her voice around it, spinning in subtle melismas, pitch-shifted, sometimes in the middle of a syllable, sometimes to effect a deeper, male voice, and also layered. You can hear the influence of Enya, but Obel’s layers are strategic, accenting certain elements of a song.

When a track isn’t centered on piano, it’s centered on a simple sequencer riff as on “Deem Me Now.” Obel launches a four-note bass synthesizer sequence pattern that pans continuously left and right in 60s psychedelic fashion. It’s one of the starker tracks, just her voice and the sequencer until the last seconds when strings and flute arc in sustain tones. It all underpins Obel singing of judgement, both from herself and others, and freeing herself.

Another track using a sequencer basis is “Jenn’s on the Way.” The four note organ-like riff recalls mid-period Philip Glass. Jenn is a real person, Jenn Rudelove, and a life-long friend who is always late. She actually sings on the track. It’s a song of frustration ending with the line, “I banged my head on a Flower.”

Fear and conflict seem to permeate the album and you can hear that on “Don’t Look Down.” It’s a simple Chopinesque tune in ¾ time with just piano and flute. It sounds like a gentle waltz, but the lyrics are more foreboding.

Oh I am not afraid
It seems alright outside my head
The rebels are cold and the guards are down
The giver of nothing has turned around, never.

Agnes Obel has a beautiful and flexible voice made even more so with pitch-shifting and processing. “Laymelli” is so twisted that it’s almost impossible to discern the lyrics without a lyric sheet. Her voice twists and turns almost like someone having difficulty speaking. She sings lines like “Do you know what I am not?” with the same inflection and pronunciation as she does the phonetic lyric “DOAUY”. But that is one of the things about Obel’s music. Voice is an instrument and not just a carrier of words, but a more emotional, deeper meaning. “Laymelli” is one of the more layered tracks with her voice spun into choirs, icy strings and an insistent groove with bass and shakers. Ultimately, it’s about change including the change that childbirth has brought to her

The album ends with “Faustian Deal.” Here Obel is talking about the sacrifices she’s made to have the music life she’s explored for the last 20 years. She casts herself as Minerva, born from the head of Zeus fully formed and armored. It’s one of the more ambitiously arranged songs on the album, like it could’ve come from Myopia. She engages in complex counterpoints, rhythmic shifts, and timbral colors that are more kaleidoscopic than most of the simple keyboard motifs of the rest of the album.

Agnes Obel’s The Meaning of Flowers is not a record you can grasp on first listen. Like excavating an ancient temple, it gets deeper as its musical and lyrical language unfold, revealing a life that has been transformed.

Read our review of Myopia
Read our review of Citizen of Glass
Read our review of Philharmonics