With her distinctive and commanding voice, Angel Olsen’s reputation as both a singer and musician has been steadily growing over the past several years. Her upcoming album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, utilises new band members to expand her sound from acoustic folk to include rock and power-pop elements. Olsen spoke to us from her new hometown of Asheville, North Carolina.
So, how’s the move from Chicago to Asheville been?
Well, it’s not been so bad, especially moving here, because it’s a small town in the mountains, and I have a very small, good group of friends here. So, it’s a break to live here versus a big city.
Any plans to start a local collective?
Oh, I dunno. I mean, my band’s pretty spread out – Stewart, who plays guitar, is in Nashville, and Josh, who plays drums, is in Louisville. Emily, our new bassist, is moving from Chicago to Wilmington, NC.
How is the experience of transferring your older material to the new touring setup?
Josh and Stewart were actually surprisingly very interested in learning the older material as well as the new stuff. But now, it’s mostly the album we all recorded together, with six or seven of the older songs mixed in, and even now, listening to some of the older songs with a rock band behind them, it’s like I could’ve written those songs with the band. So, I feel like it’s all kind of translating pretty well.
So, when you were writing the songs for the new album, did you write them with a band in mind?
Well, I had been listening to a lot of upbeat music while I’d been waiting to put out [the first album] *Half Way Home*, so I was kind of bummed because, here I was, being inspired by more upbeat music, and I was having to promote a kind of quiet, reflective album. So, it was really exciting to eventually share those songs with two people who listened to the same kind of music I did. We’d been listening to The Clean and Peter Case and just getting into these kind of upbeat power-pop albums, and I think some of that made it in to the writing. But I still feel like, even now, listening to it, I don’t think the writing has changed so drastically. I just think that, for example, it’s very easy for a listener, with the press that’s been surrounding my name, to think that this new album will be exactly like the tracks released as singles, but it’s not like that. It’s a mix of what I’ve already done, and also what I’ve been wanting to do, only now I have a band to do it. That’s a long explanation, but…
I noticed that writing on the new album has a lot of instances of “I wish…” or “If only…” phrasing, songs about people trying to change the world around them.
I think that each song does have an example of it. In fact, I feel like they’re all different vignettes, but a different take on the same situation. But, I guess it is a lot of the same theme in that it would be cool if everything made sense and if everyone were connecting in the way they thought they were connecting, but that’s just not the truth. I’m not trying to write a self-help book, but it’s this idea of, like on Iota, for example, “Too bad! It just doesn’t work that way.” And, I’m not trying to say that it’s a bad thing, I think that it is lonely, but it’s not necessarily bad-lonely. I tried to put some positive stuff in there, finally!
I thought your last album had some positivity, some “Find the power within!” stuff. Not to make it sound like a self-help book…
I write in a very introspective way, but I live my life, you know? I’m not crying in a closet somewhere! I’ll go out and have fun with my friends, and every now and then I’ll have an idea or a thought, but the fact that I put it into song is what gives that thought power. I’m sure that lots of other people have similar thoughts – they just don’t sing them. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to sing them. I like to celebrate transparency, I guess.
Angel Olsen’s new album Burn Your Fire For No Witness is released on February 14th by Jagjaguwar Records.
Words: Leo Devlin
