By ALLISON BAUGHMAN
Writer, SNSPost
Founder, RockCoutureDreams
This column is dedicated to offering you insight to artists on the rise. I feature musicians that have the potential to make it big. You get to listen and determine their fate.
Although we are in an age in which dance music has taken over the top charts, there is something to be said about slower, more naturally melodic tunes. It’s timeless. And to be able to perform a timeless piece is one of or possibly thee greatest gift a musician can receive from the gods of music. In one of my previous articles, I introduced to you what I thought was a rather spot on genetic makeup of Ben Cooper, aka Radical Face. Today is the day we meet his fictitious mother, the hauntingly talented Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel. Miss Agnes Caroline Thaarp Obel was born into very musically talented family in Copenhagen, where she learned to play the piano from her mother at a very young age. She went on to join a band around the age of seven, appeared in a Danish film at the age of 14 where her brother played the lead, and at the age of 17 she stopped her schooling to follow the musical directions of a man she had met who ran a studio. She took this time to gain more knowledge about the music industry and a couple of years later she started the band Sohio. This band didn’t work to Obel’s favor, for she found it to be too confined for artistic creativity. In 2005 she moved to Berlin, where she felt she could spread her wings a little more and find just the amount of inspiration she needed to create a solo album. In 2009, Obel released a single on her MySpace account titled “Just So.” A telecommunications company picked up this single for an advertisement which gave Obel just the boost she needed to complete an album.
On October 4, 2010, Agnes Obel released her first solo album titled Philharmonics which turned out to be an unbelievable success. Three of the songs were featured in the film ‘Submarino’ and the song “Riverside” was featured in an episode of the abcFamily show ‘Revenge,’ which is actually how I found out who she was. The song was meticulously added within the last two minutes of the show and it immediately grabbed my attention. Her album has won her an exorbitant amount of awards, five of which were won at the Danish Music Awards, including Best Songwriter of the Year, Best Female Artist of the Year and Best Album of the Year. Agnes is currently working on a second album, she says, which will mostly focus on new intricate melodies, some of which is her piano alone. She’s Danish, she’s gorgeous and she is completely gifted. The thought of a second album gives me an extreme amount of goose bumps.
I have a soft spot for the weird ones, and Miss Chelsea Wolfe is definitely one of those. She’s one of those interesting crosses between folk music and urban goth…heavy on the goth. Her music is certainly unique; very dark and kind of dreary, but when she sings there is an element of passion that is rare to come across nowadays. I believe it to be something Mary Shelley would produce if she was a musician living in this era. Her personal style is just as fitting for her music as she’s been seen wearing the avant garde fashions of Alexander McQueen and Mordekai. I imagine her recording all of her music lying on a bed with her eyes closed moving her onyx covered fingers and bangle clad arms in motions making her seem somewhat possessed. You know, that kind of musician. My good friend sent me some of her music a couple of weeks ago via Spotify with a note saying “You’re welcome,” and man, am I ever grateful that she opened my eyes to Miss Wolfe. She’s just the right dose of musical therapy for these dark and bleak days we are currently encountering, those days where we just want to lay in our beds at night and wallow in nature’s winter desolation.
Chelsea Wolfe is based out of Los Angeles CA, and has released two albums: The Grime and the Glow, which was realeased Decemeber, 2010, and Apokalypsis, which was released in October. Apokalypsis was reviewed by Pitchfork and NPR, along with Nylon Mag as one of their “Band Crushes.” She is currently working on her self-titled third album which will showcase a “new found poise,” as it says in her website. Check out ChelseaWolfe.net for more information of tours and plenty of dreary pictures.
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