Angel Olsen

Agree w/ufo. Somehow the music videos made my experiences listening to All Mirrors feel incomplete, as though the songs were made for the visuals and not the other way round. On first listen I prefer this.

anyone else preferring Whole New Mess to All Mirrors?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ibj87fwRaM

new song with sharon van etten, it's pretty nice. sounds like it's just a one off though

SVE has been killing it lately.

I love this song. It has a 80s power ballad vibe that’s perfect for me.

love these two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65olvSNTEw

Gloria was bad. This is less bad, but still bad. idk

these covers really aren't playing to her strengths at all

This would be better filtered way down so it sounds like you’re hearing it from three rooms over.

I've just grown weary of the whole "take an uptempo 80s song and make it morose" approach, and while nothing will ever be worse than what Lorde did to Tears For Fears, these are close.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjXQWZryxOM

"I will say originally I wrote this song in 2017, 2018 when I was on tour. I was trying to get Sturgill Simpson to sing it. I was trying to sell it, give it to people. I was like, "Who would want to sing this?" And eventually I started writing more songs that were kind of along the same lines or sort of kin to it, from the record. And I thought, maybe it's time to embrace the fact that I'm not afraid to embrace these roots and to embrace where I live and how it's affected me, and to embrace just a minimal feeling, and to just be straight up about stuff."

really like this song/sound, the last two records never grabbed me.

this is nice, like it more than the last album

Loved the last album and also extremely ready for this new direction

oh this sounds amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXDHL_c65M

lovely

well, it certainly embraces a minimal feeling

the world said, give us more soporific jazz-inflected lanacore, give us the be my baby beat slowed down to quarter-speed, and angel heard the world

i love this album

I think I do too. Wasn't expecting to.

Listening now.

Listening to the album. I like the overall mood so far.
I loved "All the good times" and the album seems to follow in that direction.

One listen so far - totally love it. Great follow up to All Mirrors, the country elements suit her really well. My be the first album since the Big Thief album earlier this year where I feel really excited to replay it often, from the moment I heard the opening track.

I didn't care for All Mirrors and actively disliked the 80s covers EP, so that's why I'm surprised by how much I vibe with this one.

all mirrors was grand and distant, i never connected with it either

this one seems to pick up where the second half of my woman left off

this album is great but you're all so wrong about all mirrors

This is a Lee Hazlewood record, so probably my favorite of hers so far. I, too, object to the All Mirrors backlash!

All Mirrors is great. Her anti-vax comments put me off her last two years' output, but this is great, too. Lee Hazlewood, otm.

lol i had no idea about that, depressing

I guess it was comment, not comments, tbf.

apparently she backed down too? but lol

Didn't she just share one hippie COVID video early on and then said she got fooled or something?

(said she got fooled in the worst possible way - "got played, playa" IIRC)

This is a Lee Hazlewood record, so probably my favorite of hers so far. I, too, object to the All Mirrors backlash!

Letting this album settle in a little more - still love it.

That said the "country" narrative that preceded the release is a little overblown. (Is that the theme of 2022? See also the new Wilco album which is an even worse offender.) It fades away after the first few tracks and only reappears here and there. The rest is great, akin to All Mirrors, just not super country.

If it takes me a minute to get over that, it's because a) it was a selling point; b) it's what I REALLY wanted; and c) the first two tracks totally deliver so the pivot away from the country elements feels a little deflating. The songs are still great they just aren't syncing with my expectations.

That gripe aside I think this album starts really strong and ends on a great run of songs. The middle third loses some of the momentum - like the album just slows down to Angel's ballad mode a little sooner than I want it to.

It's a solid album but I don't hear country, not in the Miranda Lambert or Charlie Worsham sense. Y'all know Nicole Atkins? She tried something like this in 2017. A better record.

When people talk about country in the indie realm, they aren't talking about Miranda Lambert or Charlie Worsham and you know that.

Also, that Nicole Atkins record you're talking about is a different thing imo—more Memphis-y country, Dusty Springfield style, which this is decidedly not.

Then people in the indie realm should be more precise, that's not my problem. If they mea in the Jason Isbell sense, then say so.

and I'd say Nicole Atkins is in the Tanya Tucker and Patty Loveless wing of big-voiced country, not Dusty Springfield, so those indie realm fans should be more precise -- but they aren't listening to Tucker or Loveless.

Oh get real, you DID NOT come to an Angel Olsen record expecting it to sound anything like Miranda Lambert. Get down from the cross.

xp the Nicole Atkins record has horn sections and behind the beat grooves all over it. I was being PRECISE.

I did not. I'm trying to define what posters mean by "country." The fuck are you so upset about?

Get down from the cross.

Who the fuck are you talking to here?

Only a plebe would cue up an Angel Olsen "country" record expecting it to sound like 21st century popular country music, and you're definitely not a plebe, so it came across as very disingenuous. It was the Isbell crack that put me on edge, though, because it's not like that either.

Without getting into the billionth authenticity argument, I'll just say that there's stuff written to a pro tools grid and stuff that's more traditional and loose, and you can like both, one or the other, or neither. But they're very different.

the country influence has definitely been overstated in the press, like it's really just the first two tracks & "this is how it works" where it's prominent

It's like the Wilco record, mentioned above, where people hear a pedal or lap steel and think GODDAM IT'S COUNTRY MUSIC! Some people bitch about Americana even being a term/genre, but I guess we've gotta call it something, and I'd call about half of the record Americana.

When I play an Angel Olsen album, even with pedal steel guitar, I expect it to sound closer to Phoebe Bridgers and, yes, Jason Isbell: well-wrought singer-songwriter material.

I don't know what you mean by your second paragraph, not when Lambert can write and perform to or without a Pro Tools grid, as she's proven in the last 12 months. And Olsen may use Pro Tools -- and who cares if she did?