{"id":35781,"date":"2022-06-04T00:18:16","date_gmt":"2022-06-04T00:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/angel-olsen-finds-a-new-gear-in-a-vintage-genre-on-big-time\/"},"modified":"2022-06-04T00:18:16","modified_gmt":"2022-06-04T00:18:16","slug":"angel-olsen-finds-a-new-gear-in-a-vintage-genre-on-big-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/angel-olsen-finds-a-new-gear-in-a-vintage-genre-on-big-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Angel Olsen Finds a New Gear in a Vintage Genre on &#8216;Big Time&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Angel Olsen does not care for empty pleasantries, in conversation or her music.  \u201cI don&#8217;t like small talk,\u201d the 35-year-old St. Louis-born singer and songwriter said in a recent New Yorker profile, while driving around Asheville, NC, the town she has called home for nearly a decade.  Similarly, the songs on her superb sixth album by lei, &#8220;Big Time,&#8221; prefer plunging right into the depths.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI had a dream last night \/ We were having a fight \/ It lasted 25 years,\u201d begins the unfussily titled \u201cDream Thing,\u201d an atmospheric ballad that imagines an encounter with an ex and feels like an unmediated transmission from the subconscious.  Later, on the plaintive, acoustic-guitar-driven &#8220;This Is How It Works,&#8221; she cuts even more directly to the chase: &#8220;I know you can&#8217;t talk long, but I&#8217;m barely hanging on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">&#8220;Big Time&#8221; was recorded last year, at the end of a particularly tumultuous time in Olsen&#8217;s life: Shortly after she came out to her parents &#8211; she had her first romantic relationship and subsequent breakup with a woman during the pandemic &#8211; her father, then her mother both died of separate illnesses within two months of each other.  Though these life-scrambling events are not explicitly referenced on the album, \u201cBig Time\u201d (which she recorded in Topanga, Calif., With the producer Jonathan Wilson) is charged with a continuous current of weighty, transformative and bracingly cleareyed emotion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Olsen&#8217;s voice has always been a strangely stirring instrument, like an imaginary folk trio of Roy Orbison, Karen Dalton and Lucinda Williams singing in tight harmony.  On her di lei electrifying but rough-edged 2012 debut album, \u201cHalf Way Home,\u201d Olsen leaned defiantly into her vocal idiosyncrasies, imbuing almost every note with an intense warble.  In the decade since, across a series of increasingly confident and ambitious records, she has learned how to modulate those eccentricities, making them hit with an ever blunter force.  Her previous album by her, \u201cAll Mirrors\u201d from 2019, featured dark, almost gothic synth-rock and affecting forays into orchestral pop.  On \u201cBig Time\u201d &#8211; the first album on which Olsen is singing consciously about queer desire &#8211; she turns to a notably tradition-bound genre: country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a way, it makes sense.  Long before the eminently viral &#8220;sad girl&#8221; aesthetic (a somewhat reductive description that has stuck to the women of millennial indie-rock like Olsen, Mitski and Phoebe Bridgers), female country stars like Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette found the genre a welcome place to luxuriate in bottomless melancholy.  Both of those artists feel like touchstones on \u201cBig Time\u201d (\u201cI&#8217;ve never been too sad,\u201d Olsen sings at one point, \u201cToo sad that I couldn&#8217;t share\u201d).  But on torch songs like the stark \u201cGhost On\u201d and the stunning \u201cRight Now,\u201d Olsen finds a perfect balance between honoring the sounds of country&#8217;s past and updating them in her own image of her.  &#8220;Why&#8217;d you have to go and make it weird?&#8221;  she belts on one of the most sonically grandiose moments of the record &#8211; the swooping chorus of \u201cRight Now\u201d &#8211; a perfect bit of colloquial lyricism that makes this timeless-seeming song singularly hers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The opener and first single, \u201cAll the Good Times,\u201d is a laid-back breakup song that Olsen wrote a few years before the album was recorded;  she has said she initially intended to offer it to the country star Sturgill Simpson, but it&#8217;s difficult to imagine it in anyone else&#8217;s hands, with its weary benevolence and patiently paced but still explosive emotional climax.  \u201cI can&#8217;t say that I&#8217;m sorry when I don&#8217;t feel so wrong anymore,\u201d Olsen sings atop light, clopping percussion and a lap steel that winks like it&#8217;s in a Steve Miller song.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While the first half of the record doesn&#8217;t scrimp on heartbreaking moments (&#8220;All the Flowers&#8221; is a highlight, showcasing Olsen&#8217;s intuitive crooner&#8217;s phrasing and gift for melody), &#8220;Big Time&#8221; crescendos in its second half, across a stretch of tracks that contains two of the most devastating songs she has ever composed.  The first is &#8220;Right Now,&#8221; a country lament that, in its final minute, transforms into a dissonant, flinty-eyed confrontation \u00e0 la Fleetwood Mac&#8217;s &#8220;Silver Spring&#8221;: &#8220;I need you to look at me and listen,&#8221; Olsen intones , &#8220;I am the past coming back to haunt you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Then there&#8217;s \u201cGo Home,\u201d an ornate conflagration of a song that sounds like an antiquated theater burning down in slow motion.  &#8220;I wanna go home,&#8221; Olsen wails like someone who knows it&#8217;s too late to &#8220;Go back to small things.&#8221;  Her vocal performance di lei is wrenching, but by the song&#8217;s end she has arrived at a kind of peace: &#8220;Forget the old dream,&#8221; she sings, &#8220;I got a new thing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Olsen&#8217;s music resists easy sentiment, and \u201cBig Time\u201d ends on an appropriately ambiguous note.  If she wanted an uncomplicated happy ending, she might have concluded with the breezy, love-struck title track, which lei Olsen wrote with her current partner di lei, Beau Thibodeaux.  (Its chorus revolves around one of the intimate catchphrases of their relationship: &#8220;I love you big time.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The record instead fades out with &#8220;Chasing the Sun,&#8221; a song that also depicts a budding new love and contains some of Olsen&#8217;s most playful lyrics &#8211; &#8220;write a postcard to you when you&#8217;re in the other room&#8221; &#8211; but its plangent arrangement of piano and strings make it sound like an elegy.  Olsen seems once again to be ruminating on the transformative nature of grief: It may never vanish completely, but in time perhaps it can imbue the hard-won good times with an extra shine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-l0zicj etfikam0\">Angel Olsen<br \/>&#8220;Big Time&#8221;<br \/>(Jagjaguwar)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Angel Olsen does not care for empty pleasantries, in conversation or her music. \u201cI don&#8217;t like small talk,\u201d the 35-year-old St. Louis-born singer and songwriter said in a recent New Yorker profile, while driving around Asheville, NC, the town she has called home for nearly a decade. Similarly, the songs on her superb sixth album &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/angel-olsen-finds-a-new-gear-in-a-vintage-genre-on-big-time\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Angel Olsen Finds a New Gear in a Vintage Genre on &#8216;Big Time&#8217;<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/06\/03\/arts\/03olsen-review1\/03olsen-review1-facebookJumbo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35781"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}