On the track âHigh & Wildâ from her 2014 album Burn Your Fire for No Witness, Angel Olsen sings, âIâm neither innocent or wise when you look me in the eyes/You might as well be blind/You might as well be blind/âCause you donât see me anymore.â Throughout her catalog, Olsen embodies this lyric; sheâs intentionally difficult to nail down, and defies easy categorization.
Listening to the echoing folk of her 2011 LP debut, Strange Cacti, feels voyeuristic, like hearing your neighbor sing an entire opera in their shower. 2012âs Half Way Home sounds like the neighbor realized youâd been eavesdropping, with these wild but secret aquatic arias reforming as sparse acoustic numbers. 2014âs Burn Your Fire for No Witness plugs in for blowout guitar-rock thatâs bruised but biting with lyrics like âWill you ever forgive me/A thousand times through/For loving you?â
2016âs My Woman is full of anti-love songs, and finds Olsen soaking in the spotlight of pristine production without ever letting you close enough to truly know her: âInternâ opens the record with spacy synth-pop, but the twangy âShut Up Kiss Meâ centers on Olsenâs guttural Roy Orbison-inspired crooning, with guitar riffs that rush into the chorus like a nosebleed. The albumâs second half is entirely different, and sprawls into the white-light horizon of seven-minute ballads.
On My Woman, Olsen doesnât linger on any one genre or subject long enough for you to make any assumptions about her. Anything that seems certainâother than her stunning capacity as an artistâis just a trick of light.