The follow-up to 2017's acclaimed Citizen of Glass,
Myopia is the Danish singer/songwriter's fourth full-length effort and the second collection of songs self-produced in her Berlin home studio. Built on the competing themes of trust and doubt, the aptly named
Myopia is
Agnes Obel's most insular work to date, continuing in the vein of its predecessor with dramatic pitch-tuned vocals and Gothic chamber pop melodies.
Obel has been refining her spectral nocturnes for a decade now, and
Myopia, with its fever dream vistas and melancholy abyss, doesn't disappoint. The slowed-down vocals that helped make Citizen of Glass feel so otherworldly appear early on, imbuing "Camera's Rolling," "Island of Doom," and "Broken Sleep" with a sort of incorporeal grandeur -- the latter cut, an arm hair-raising, pre-dawn insomnia hymn, bears both tonal and architectural similarities to COG highlight "Familiar." Intimate closer "Won't You Call Me" impresses as well, administering just enough warmth to suggest a thaw might be possible while maintaining the phantasmal vibe of everything that came before. It also serves as an excellent showcase for
Obel's fluid voice; part
Ella, part
Enya, and part Eraserhead's Lady in the Radiator.
Obel dabbles in
Lynch-ian dream pop on the titular track ("Have you ever been to my myopia/think of a subtle way to let it go"), but for the most part,
Myopia traverses the same darkened hallways as its forbearers, searching for light fixtures amidst the impermeable gloom. 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. ~ James Christopher Monger