Angel Olsen, Vagabon

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Cameron McCool

Angel Olsen

On her latest critically acclaimed album, All Mirrors, the singer/songwriter — who moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Asheville, North Carolina — embraces the sounds of icons like Dolly Parton and Whitney Houston, combining them with her own indie rock and pop sensibilities. Songs such as “Too Easy” showcase Olsen’s sublime compositions and entrancing vocals. With Vagabon.

$28 ($25 adv.).

press release: Angel Olsen will release her fourth full-length album,  All Mirrors, on October 4 via Jagjaguwar. Olsen’s bold and unexpected All Mirrors comes over three years after the release of MY WOMAN, a top 10 critically praised album of 2016. In conjunction with the announcement, Olsen unveils the title track and its video, directed by Ashley Connor and conceived by Olsen.

On her vulnerable new album, All Mirrors, Olsen takes an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations. In the process of making this album, she found a new sound and voice, a blast of fury mixed with hard won self-acceptance. All Mirrors gets its claws into you on both micro and macro levels. Of course, there’s that singular vibrato, always so very close — seemingly simple, cooed phrases expand into massive ideas about the inability to love and universal loneliness. And then suddenly — huge string arrangements and bellowing synth swells emerge, propelling the apocalyptic tenor.  

In creating All Mirrors, Olsen initially planned to work on a dual record release — a set of raw and real solo songs and a full band version of the same songs — both to be released at once. She recorded the solo version with producer Michael Harris in Anacortes, Washington. There, she was determined to keep it bare bones in order to contrast with the not yet recorded full band record. Soon after that was completed, she began work on the more ambitious, fleshed out version with producer John Congleton, with whom she collaborated on 2014’s breakout Burn Your Fire for No Witness, arranger Jherek Bischoff, multi-instrumentalist/arranger/pre-producer Ben Babbitt, and a 14-piece orchestra.  

While remaking the album with full production and new collaborators, Olsen developed a new relationship with control, and as she got further into the process, she realized she “needed to separate these two records and release All Mirrors in its heaviest form. . . It was impossible for me to deny how powerful and surprising the songs had become. The truth is that I may have never allowed this much sonic change in the first place had I not already made an account of the same songs in their purest form.”

As previously announced, Olsen will tour North America this fall. She will present a brand new live show, playing New York’s Brooklyn Steel, Los Angeles’ Palace Theatre, Denver’s Gothic Theatre, and more. Special guest Vagabon will support.