The world has met a lot of different versions of Angel Olsen over the course of the singer’s career. Many first heard her as one of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s backup singers when she was part of The Cairo Gang in the late Aughts. In 2010, she released a solo acoustic EP called Strange Cacti, which she followed in 2012 with the folksy and assured full-length Half Way Home. Having put her arresting, chameleonic voice and nuanced songs in the spotlight, she signed with widely loved indie Jagjaguwar and in 2014 released Burn Your Fire for No Witness, her first album to feature a full-on rock band.
Olsen was embraced as indie rock’s anti-ingenue with 2016’s My Woman, a whip-smart patchwork of genres and musings about love. Three years later, All Mirrors introduced us to Olsen’s most vulnerable presentation of herself yet, surrounded by electronic and orchestral elements. Then, ever committed to unending artistic evolution, she teamed up with engineer Michael Harris (Haim, Lana Del Rey, Brittany Howard) and took many of those songs down to the studs for 2020’s Whole New Mess.
Still, Olsen was just getting started. After facing some of her most challenging years yet — she went through an especially difficult breakup, and her parents died within months of each other in 2021 — she introduces us to her most unvarnished self on her latest LP, Big Time.
“After losing my parents I was like, ‘Oh, mortality is a real thing,’ ” Olsen tells me, on a call from her North Carolina home. “ ‘It’s not just something I think about or read about or see in movies. It’s right next to me. It’s in my fucking face, and nothing compares to that. Because we’re all gonna die. We’re all gonna leave this earth.’ And meditating on that thought — not to be weird — but I came to a point where I needed to make something for me. This record is for me. I’m so glad people can enjoy it, but it really was just for me.”
The most stunning result of Olsen’s new approach is “Go Home,” an ethereal anthem in which she at first seems to be calling out to be rescued. The more I listen, the more it sounds like she is summoning the strength to rescue herself from the dark, isolating days of the pandemic. A dizzying rush of lush orchestration — piano, strings, horns and more — elevates her voice as she forcefully declares: “I wanna go home / Go back to small things / I don’t belong here / Nobody knows me.”
She says the song was inspired by all the ways her outlook changed during the pandemic — her search for truth amid the noise, her commitment to small pleasures to get through the day and learning to listen to herself and listen for meaning in things around her, however fleeting they may be. As much as Big Time is rooted in loss, grief and navigating the unknown, the record is also full of love. Olsen wrote the starry-eyed, classic-country-tinged title track with her partner Beau Thibodeaux, whom she introduced to fans when she came out as queer via Instagram last year.
The record ends with another blissfully romantic number, “Chasing the Sun.” In the relaxed and dreamy piano ballad, Olsen sings: “Write a postcard to you / When you’re in the other room / Just writing to say that I can’t find my clothes / If you’re lookin’ for something to do.”
“People are totally going to make out while listening to Big Time,” I tell her.
“I hope so,” she says. “I hope people do make out to my music sometimes instead of just sit at home and cry.”
For her Saturday night performance at the Ryman, the third date on the Wild Hearts co-headlining tour she’s on with Sharon Van Etten and Julien Baker, Olsen says she’ll be performing first — “so come early and hang with me.” Fans can expect some collaboration between all the women, which no doubt will include “Like I Used To,” Olsen’s majestic duet with Van Etten released last year.
Olsen’s attitude shifts as soon as I ask about Van Etten. She gets excited and begins shuffling through her tourmate’s catalog in her head to remember the name of her favorite song. It’s “Come Back,” from this year’s stellar release We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong.
“I wish that song was a fucking single,” Olsen says, starting to gently sing the chorus. “ ‘Come back, come baaaack’ — it’s so good! I want to be like, ‘Hey, do you have any songs you don’t want to sing? I’ll sing ’em! You have to sing ‘Shut Up Kiss Me,’ because I’m done with that one.’ ”
With Big Time Olsen marks not just a notable shift in her songwriting, but also celebrates 10 years since her breakthrough release. She’s been making music long enough to listen back to earlier material with a more critical, less personal ear. For better or for worse.
“When I rehearse [‘Shut Up Kiss Me’], sometimes I start it and I have to stop because I just start laughing. Because it’s just fucking ridiculous! … But you have to do it. It’s good to laugh at yourself. It’s part of life. It’s important to keep laughing.”
