It’s rare to come across a voice like Angel Olsen’s. When you watch her perform live, you immediately become overawed with calmness; an air of composure that is harmonized effortlessly through words aching with despair. It’s a sentiment that lives throughout her second studio effort, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, but it’s amplified to a degree that leaves the listener speechless. In just 11 tracks, Olsen claws through a range of raw alternative and achieves a balance of delicate disposition and immeasurable strength – the latter being heavily attributed to her voice which she still sees as a formidable challenge.
“I think I’m still trying to figure out what my actual voice is,” she explains in a phone call from a few weeks ago. “I’ve always felt like it’s my weakness and also the thing that makes whatever it is I’m doing feel strong as I’m always trying to do a lot at once.” With the addition of a full band – bassist Stewart Bronaugh and drummer Josh Jaeger – Olsen has progressed with a new sense of precision and a more comprehensive sound that translates throughout Burn Your Fire. Noticeable singles such as “Hi-Five” and “Forgiven/Forgotten” maintain a cohesive tone that’s easy to pick out in a club or a church, but they’re heavily accentuated by Olsen’s desire to explore the heights of her trembling expression. Such is the case on the album closer “Windows”, a recording that challenged Olsen to fully discover a new take on her voice. It wasn’t a pre-medicated idea or one that was ripped from influences and tested with sound. In her own words, it was a song that “just came out” and one that had invited a vocal style she had never used before.
It’s clear the Missouri-born songwriter feels a tinge of uncertainty when it comes to her overwhelming acclaim, but Olsen embodies that “it” factor – that ease of expression that many so desperately try to mimic – and it’s just so natural for her. It might come as a surprise, but her personality is strikingly down-to-earth. So much so that during our conversation, I had to continuously remind myself I wasn’t chatting with an old friend I had known since grade school – reflecting on new music, what it’s like to travel the world, and how you can cope with the pressures of interpersonal relationships. Even when HBO’s Girlscame up as a topic, she didn’t hesitate to discuss the character she would play: “I would probably just be a preferred version of myself on one of my more depressed days. Like ‘I have so many interviews today and I haven’t done my laundry and I’m just, ugh… tired’.” As she openly admits with a laugh, “That would be my most embarrassing moment – complaining about my life as somebody who’s on tour all the time. Like my life is so hard.”
READ THE INTERVIEW HERE