With the beguiling Citizen of Glass, her third studio long-player, she looks poised to enchant the rest of the world with her dark charms. A classically trained pianist with an elegant and elastic voice, Obel’s melancholic chamber pop invokes names like Goldfrapp or Bat For Lashes, but with a succinct aura of Scandinavian refinery. Where her relatively austere prior outings relied largely on piano and strings, Citizen Of Glass revels in ghostly electronics and voice modulation, even going so far as to bring in a temperamental, late-’20s monophonic synthesizer called a Trautonium. The string arrangements are more ambitious and the composition style is a bit more opaque, but the ten-track set is unequivocally Obel-esque.
Lead single ‘Familiar’ suggested that the Danish singer songwriter was going to mine her archetypal piano ballad territory with her third album. Turns out it was a sleight of hand, as the album explores a more cinematic and orchestral sound than Obel’s previous work. It is her deft songwriting that comes to the fore as usual though. Lilting vocals, expansive orchestrations, and development win the day.
The Fat Angel Sings 