In the video clip for “When We Loved Each Other,” Ariel Oehl places simple white vases on crooked rocks in a park, carefully balancing them until the fragile things are secure, if sometimes a little askew. You can take this as a metaphor for how Oehl builds his songs on his third album DUNKLE MAGIE, perhaps you should: The Salzburg native, who lives in Vienna, whispers, mumbles rather than sings, he mostly avoids simple rhymes and the music he puts under these lyrics seems to have been quickly rushed in a good way, precisely because it was carefully arranged in analogue form.
Oehl’s songs always seem a little off track, but they consciously place themselves in the song tradition, they quote the art song, are reminiscent of Ludwig Hirsch, and even deal with Christmas. Oehl interprets the Advent hit “Maria went through a thorn forest” as a heavy, floating instrumental, celebrates “Silent Night Every Year Again” in a duet with Romi Rabić, bows to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” and describes a Christmas in the title song: “Sometimes too much feeling is also good.”
A little crooked, but intact and in all its glory
All of this doesn’t make DARK MAGIE a Christmas album, but one that is suitable for contemplative hours if you like to enjoy your contemplation with little barbs. At the end, Stella Sommer, who works in a very similar way, makes a guest appearance. Oehl leaves the stage to her magnificent voice for “Tenderly I will leave you” and only hums a little in the background.
In the “When we loved each other” video it is briefly suggested that Oehl could break the shaky vases with a stick, but this plan is abandoned, the vases remain intact – just like the concept song on DARK MAGIE: Oehl carefully jerks the shape, the song wobbles a little, at the end it stands there again, perhaps a little crooked, but intact and in all its glory.
This review appears in Musikexpress 1/2026.