The dark and funny musician on his new album, ‘Whole New Mess’, which peels off the layers of his writing procedure and his mysterious character.
A hot day in North Carolina: Early hints of hurricane season in the air and Angel Olsen runs around her home in Asheville, which she describes as a “little hippie town,” looking for her huge cat, Violet. “My space is messy, I’m sorry,” he apologizes through a video call, walking past a room full of space plants and the sofa he likes to sit on in the morning and write.
Olsen needs his beloved feline to get the well-deserved time at today’s climax. “She’s helping me write,” the musician says. “She’s the one with the whole deep mind and I just write them for her.”
This leads to a jocular riff that I’ll find is Olsen: “If you could put that in the title, it would be great. Whatever the editor, tell them, “The angle we have to pass to, with authenticity, treats Violet the cat, because she’s the real writer. She’s the one with the soul. She adds: “I am absolutely heartless, but she has such a dark and deep soul. I think he deserves it; worked very hard.” The musician followed the kitten from a rescue center. “She was given this thing of total tragedy,” Olsen says, “that everyone loves romance.”
In the same way as, say, the music of other Angel Olsen people to be tragically sad? “Oh, but it is, ” she replies without losing her rhythm.
Credits: Holden Curran
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Angel Olsen was “authoritarian and damned thug” in the suburbs of Maplewood. Like Violet, she adopted; Olsen was 3 years old at the time and has become the youngest in a circle of relatives of eight. “I had part a strong will when I was a kid because, back for adoption, they take you out of the house and put you in another house,” she says. “You hold on to that. You think, “I deserve the best.” It propelled me in many ways, but it also stopped me. This will and strength can be dark and strange.
An exclusive brain is an exact way to describe Olsen, now 33 years old: his latest solo album can provide the dictionary definition of “uncompromising”. “Whole New Mess” is largely composed of re-recordings of songs from their previous album, last year’s respected “All Mirrors” (which won NME’s full five-star remedy). While the original was lush and orchestral, the new one sees her undressing the arrangements to the bone.
“I like to do unforeseen things”
With “Whole New Mess,” Olsen returned to his musical roots. After a brief stint at massage treatment school, he was part of Chicago’s tight-knit DIY scene and sang backing vocals for cult musician Bonnie “Prince” Billy. His first solo releases in the early 2010s, the home-recorded tape “Strange Cacti” and the haunting 2012 debut album “Half Way Home” were intimate and urgent. For their upcoming albums, the 2014 breakthrough “Burn Your Fire For No Witness” and its immediate follow-up “MY WOMAN” recruited a band and diversified back into smoke-stained rock.
Angel Olsen sees his legacy with a funny honesty. She discovers that it is strange to carry out her great single “Shut Up Kiss Me” in 2016, as she evokes photographs of the fan art she receives online. “Often, when I hear the song, I see the strange, distorted versions of my face that other people label me on,” he says. “It’s not my nose, man. You made me orange! Despite those terrible visions, she will continue to play the success: “Every time you listen to an artist you love, you need to listen to the old songs.”
Angel Olsen at NME’s
It is also preceded by a reputation for attention to detail: around the launch of “MY WOMAN”, unfortunately it distributed to journalists an uns serious “fact sheet”. “He never listened to Joni Mitchell,” the first point says. Today’s interview is also preceded by a similar but somewhat less intimidating introduction: “Your interests are: reading, skating with curlers, playing softball, making videos and writing letters to your friends.”
I have a feeling that Olsen doesn’t intentionally check his interviewers, even if he does it inadvertently, but only cares about the main points he understands. “I used to replace the way other people interpreted things,” he says. “I’m looking for a way to correct other people because it’s boring. That’s because I’m a writer; I’m an editor in my mind. I need other people to have the genuine words.”
“I try to accept this component from me that is courteous”
She admits that she was “on guard” during our interview and says that even though she is chatting, she still can’t help “play.” Perhaps because of the additional time for the mirrored image offered by the blockage, Olsen has recently reflected on this line between the self and the personality we project.
“I don’t like being with other people,” he says. “It’s hard to meet an artist while watching a show. There are a lot of other introverted people and you just wouldn’t know.” Given the emotional frankness of their music, one has a tendency to feel that olsen already understands; it’s something she struggles with, because her songs can only be subjective narratives. “It’s general for other people to think they know something about me,” he says. “But that is not the total story, nor the total truth. It’s just my imagination.”
“Whole New Mess” leaves nothing to chance emotionally. It is accompanied only by guitar and sometimes with organ. The track “We Are All Mirrors” resonates disorientingly, while two sirens whistle at the other in emergency ways in any aspect of the city. “Chance (Forever Love)” takes off through the string-embellished layers of the “All Mirrors” edition and Olsen’s vocal tricks as she aspires to be clearly noticed. “I just need to see the beauty, check to understand,” he sings on a spare guitar. “If we get to know others, how rare is that?”
Credits: Holden Curran
The songs that make up “Whole New Mess” were recorded before the previous album, not as demos, but as an independent collection that later became “All Mirrors”, an album that will probably be remembered as his masterpiece of excess. However, exposed, the songs hit with an even closer intensity.
The writing procedure began on Halloween 2018 at The Unknown, a studio located at an indescribable suburban junction in the small town of Anacortes, Washington Island. In the distance, the true towers of Mount Eerie are glimpsed on the horizon. The study’s online page warns that “it is not to enter the ‘crying room’ and the bell tower (missing bell)”. Does Angel know why?
“It would be more vulnerable than being compartmentalized through people”
“The crying room is haunted, ” he said. “There is a heaviness in this room and on site. The listening room is next to the crying room. It sounded really scary that way, but maybe we’re creating it? I suppose I couldn’t tell if I was haunted or if I had brought mine there? “
The resolve to allow “All Mirrors” and “All New Disorder” coexist “is a kind of pleasure to me,” he says. She thinks that putting the two versions side by side, one magnificently ornate, intimate and more vulnerable, will reveal anything about how we interpret the words of the artists. “I think the context of the letters adapts to what it is,” he says.
With album five, Angel Olsen peels the layers of his paintings to return to the “naked versions of me”.
Credits: Holden Curran
To perceive “a completely new mess”, we will first have to perceive its predecessor; “All mirrors” is a dizzying, chaotic beauty thing. A 12-string segment buzzes like a restless wasp nest, pushing itself around the area with squeaky Parisian synths. Olsen’s voice is a force to be taken into account, temporarily moving from a calm creak to a roar of anger. From a sound standpoint, it evokes an energetic Serge Gainsbourg, the sad waltz of Twin Peaks’ score and Scott Walker’s avant-garde creations.
Olsen sings to get stuck in his own daily life at the cost of finding this infrequent and true bond. “Time has shown us how little we know each other,” he sings at the funeral “Spring.” “I’ve been too busy/ I deserve to notice.” However, despite the obvious melancholy, he ends up in a strangely comforting position of self-sufficiency. “Tonight” sees her consciously clinging to pain as an unforeseen gift. “I love the air I breathe, I love the mind, I think, I love the life I lead,” he sings, “without you.”
Basically, “All Mirrors” was a theatrical, playful and occasionally rabidly diversion of an artist remodeled in emotional frailty and sadness. Look for Angel Olsen’s call on Twitter and you’ll find countless other people pointing out that their music desperately excites them. Unfortunately, a Chicago radio host asked him what it was like to make music that looks like “a woman at the back of a dark well.” Olsen, who was betting on the show, responded by dedicating his next song to “all the little women in the Well Fund.”
“My will and may be dark and strange”
“All mirrors,” he explains today, “refers to how you look at yourself in the mirror over time and see adjustments and differences: quickly, your face, frame and symbol can change. Detour and diversion from others, and how we reflect others and locate others that reflect us in a safe way. Sometimes it’s problematic.”
In other words: by connecting with people, we also look for something in ourselves. Many songs seem to wonder if it’s imaginable to love someone in a way that doesn’t reflect on oneself. Is Angel closer to locating?
“I think it’s possible,” he said, “but you have to integrate with that user to see it sometimes. I don’t know [what it looks like] when you’re in love, because love hasn’t worked for me yet.” This, in turn, led to another wonderful question: “Did I believe this? Is my love valid if he is alone? What is the difference between creating a story and knowing that your own love for is real?
“It’s a big question of life, eh!” observes, more lightly. I don’t think anyone has the answers, but I’m very pleased to be a and to be able to spread those things. »
Credits: Holden Curran
It is true that Olsen’s songs seem, at first glance, to the paintings of someone who can perceive his own feelings clearly (in the new “What It Is”, he says ironically: “You just searched / That your center was full of shit”). However, she says with a smile that this is the whole case: “To absolutely demystify my career: I am as lost as anyone! And who do I deserve to go to? Someone once said to me, “You deserve to pay attention to your songs someday.” I don’t get my songs; I’ll give them away. I make sure I’m at peace without [having all the answers].”
“Whole New Mess” also includes two new songs through Angel Olsen: the sparse “Waving, Smiling” and its sad name. “The new total disaster,” he explains, “refers to addiction, alcohol addiction, on tour, not taking care of yourself.” Make a whole new mess,” sing in the song, “Celebrate the /Take a picture for the press again.”
On the resolution of releasing a solo album at this level of his career, Olsen says, “I’m looking to embrace that component of me that’s rude and not perfect.”
She adds with a smile: “I have tried with all my strength to be attractive, and it doesn’t matter. I love my logo symbol, black and white photos, suit jacket, dresses and all that, but do you have anything? What does it have to do with my music? Absolutely not. It’s a point of promotion.
“Love hasn’t come to me yet”
‘It’s a component of what [‘Whole New Mess’] is. I tried to get dressed so I could sell it to people. The fact is, I’m actually in my art. Can I do this for once without having to sell my face? Do I have to sexualize my body, make up for makeup, do all those things to sell my product? Is this really what this formula will look like for the rest of my life? I don’t know if you’re going to paint me … »
Instead, he says, now he needs to “protect everything that is raw, to get back to where he was.”
Olsen in the past declared that “All mirrors” marked the end of something; in 2019, he told The Cut that it is the last chapter. What did she mean?
“Who knows!” he said. she jokes. “I mean, this bankruptcy sucks too! My friends and I said 2020 would be the year of garbage burning, and it turned out to be true.
His revelation proved correct, of course: between a global pandemic and the developing Black Lives Matter movement, it was a year of careful examination of all the systems we once accepted without a doubt. “This is a year that burns garbage! Let’s reveal to everyone, everything, get the carpet off every foot of the global and investigate other people, power, other people in our lives, the other people we are. We’re going to burn everything downstairs. Rubbish burning in 2020! »
Seriously, it continues, “All Mirrors” is the end of a relationship, and at that moment I had to be informed to set boundaries with other people: the other people I worked with and in romantic relationships. I had to get into something new and he was smart for me.
Credits: Holden Curran
Angel Olsen has been getting into a lot of new things lately. In addition to this unconventional release, it recently expanded to a larger audience with “True Blue”, last year’s black-pop collaboration encouraged during the 1980s with Mark Ronson, who gave the impression of his acclaimed album “Late Night Feelings”.
“I like to do unforeseen things,” he says. Entering the world of pop was, he says, “fun.” He doesn’t have the ambition to be a pop star, but he insists with an unpleasant smile; “I’m going to infiltrate this world if I have to.”
In 2017, Olsen used Twitter to attract the left-wing collaboration prospect: Detroit rapper Danny Brown. “I just had my wisdom teeth ripped off,” he says, “but as soon as I recover, I’d like to sing one of your songs.” He said, “I treat !!!.” Two years later, he tweeted again, encouraged by his appearance at a festival in Asheville.
“This is a garbage burner … 2020 burning trash!”
The unlikely duo were not known when Brown played at Harvest Records’ TRANSFIGURATIONS III event, however, Olsen lent his car to use as a round trip on the site and Brown took a ride. “Dear Danny, ” he tweeted. “It’s me, Angel … My tour manager picked you up at my Subaru in Asheville and this is the closest I’ve ever had to you. It’s time to paint together. About time.
“I thought you were in my car! Array,” he said today about the tweet. “I don’t know if [collaboration] will ever have, but it’s funny. That would be great.
He adds that he also hopes to “do anything but play music.” Although Olsen has already tried to perform, basically in her own music videos, she’s not convinced to do so. “If you can make a smart sandwich, ” he said. says, “That doesn’t mean you open a panini corner.” He also played with the concept of writing a book.
I just keep having those relationships with other people who are so wild, he says, I’m ready to write an e-book about that because I can’t sing about it in a song anymore. Not everything can be put into melody. There’s a lot of unwred things in my head and in my global that I can’t sing about. It would be a shit to sing in … »
Like what, exactly? “I’ll stay for the book, ” he smiled.
Credits: Holden Curran
And that’s what happens to Angel Olsen: she’s an artist who writes with such heartbreaking precision and clarity about things so confusing to articulate, but that she’s still clearly personal and, somehow, unknowable. And perhaps you are right to question this tension and the concept that wonderful art comes only from open creators.
“It would be hurt and vulnerable than living a life absolutely away from people,” he concludes. “But, unfortunately, living a vulnerable life means writing all those damn unhappy records. That’s what it meant to me. Maybe one day I’ll get tired of it.”
And with that, Angel Olsen leaves: he has big plans to install a contraption called a yoga hammock later on, and plans to “start” the winter. “Violet’s going to be smashed too,” she jokes about her huge cat. “We have an exercise routine.”
Above all, she adds: “I will be so unhappy if she dies; I’ll have to ride a cat. I know it’s dark … but I love him so much. She does so many non-secular pictures for me.
Which, just before he hangs up, reminds angel Olsen of something. “Good luck with this piece, just look at this cat thing,” she says, her mind once again in Violet’s inventively artistic mind. “Very important”.
“Whole New Mess” by Angel Olsen is August 28