Halloween Comes Early on Agnes Obel’s “Aventine”

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Agnes Obel
Aventine
Play It Again Sam

Aventine

To get those spooky vibes going in advance of Halloween, check out Aventine, the sophomore effort from melancholy Dane Agnes Obel. Restrained yet melodically lush, her elegant chamber pop intertwines haunted vocals, sometimes overdubbed to heavenly choir dimensions, and moonlit, introspective piano, with spare, brooding strings underscoring the sense of downcast beauty.

Such dreamy understatement might verge on New Age blandness in lesser hands, but Obel maintains an arresting undercurrent of dread in deceptively forceful tunes like “Fuel to Fire” and “Words Are Dead.” While Aventine is the perfect 2 a.m. record, its atmospheric haze will bring a little late-night mystery to any time of day.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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