Angel Olsen – All Mirrors
(Jagjaguwar Records)
Reviewed by Tim Gruar.
“Standin’, facin’, all mirrors are erasin’ /Losin’ beauty, at least at times it knew me.”
In creating All Mirrors, Alt-Americana artist Angel Olsen went looking for a new sound and a new voice. What she has found is wrapped in a blast of fury mixed with hard-won self-acceptance, as she dives deep into introspection looking at love from an abstract position.
Olsen rocks but she ain’t heavy. All Mirrors, Olsen’s 5th album, is Lounge music for the jagged heart. It’s Burt Bacharach OD-ing on SWANS records after ingesting a healthy dose of Kate Bush and Tiny Ruins. Usually known for her bitter sweet low light folk pop she’s often compared to Patsy Cline or even Roy Orbison. But lately she’s been experimenting with other styles, keen to distance herself from the artistic restrictions she defined for herself on 2016’s gigantic success My Woman. That included working with mega-hit maker Mark Ronson on the single True Blue, in search of a modern disco with nihilistic punch.
According to the stories, there were actually going to be two versions of this record, released simultaneously. One was going to be an acoustic version. Bare bones and bare soul. The second was a full version with band, strings and bombastic production. It became clear that eight of the 11 songs here need a full orchestra to really demonstrate their power. She’d wanted to isolate herself but along the way her process required her to be more collaborative, bringing on board a bigger band.
She enlisted the help of Ben Babbitt (LA based composer, artist, and musician known for indie film and games scores like Kentucky Route Zero) and Jherek Bischoff (Amanda Palmer’s Grand Theft Orchestra) to create some truly show stopping string arrangements. And then got producer and Grammy Award winner John Congleton (who’s worked with everyone from Laurie Anderson and Amanda Palmer to David Byrne and Unknown Mortal Orchestra) to shape these into the sonic masterpieces they have become.
Audiophiles will definitively treasure their vinyl version of this release. It has the flavour of those late 60’s orchestral releases and the warm hum of the jazz era acetates. The movement between whispered vocals to soaring choruses amped up to level 11 will test the best stereos and speakers.
Although she lives in Asheville, North Carolina the songs were written mostly in self-imposed isolation working in the idyllic Skagit County island town of Anacortes in Washington State. A quick Google will show you reasonably big urban location surrounded by thick forests, inland seas and natural harbours, and the Strait of Georgia, close to the Canadian border. You can imagine bears coming into town to raid the rubbish bins. Trucker caps. Ginger-bearded men in plaid shirts. Pick-up trucks. Nature, wilds, space to think. This is a bucolic mix of rural and modern living that no doubt informed much of the sentiments behind this reconciliation of love, where identity becomes an illusion, an abstract being in the affair and its remaining embers. You get that clearest in her dithering musings during Spring: “Guess we’re just at the mercy of the way we feel. This is definitely a change from her usual razor sharp, acerbic writing style.
On the opener Lark Olsen pleads to return to a time before the break up. This whispered request is swept up in a whirling groove the builds repetitively to a maelstrom of strings and anguish. In there are twists and turns in the score, including a violin break that reminds you of the most poignant parts of the Beatles Eastern flavoured Within You Without You. The song is not just a simple cathartic sing through, to expel the issues of a relationship. This feels more like a violent divorce than a simple break up. It gets very dense, dark, a self-deprecating exploration of the verbal abuse suffered during her previous relationships, all coming out: art as anger. “Dream On, Dream On, Dream On…” she taunts, like a dare.
The second track, and album title, All Mirrors, is a reflection of the first, and picks up the drama. It works like the second part Lark. She’s standing in front of a mirror but her reflection is not the happy person she once was.
“All this trouble tryin’ to catch right up with me/ I keep movin’, knowin’ someday that I will be/ Standin’, facin’, all mirrors are erasin’ /Losin’ beauty, at least at times it knew me /At least at times it knew me.”
‘It’ being love, or happiness, I suspect. The flavours in the music and melody are similar. Perhaps a little bit more desperate. With washes of synth and symphony this is a dreamier mood. You can’t help feeling Lana Del Rey has slipped in and taken over. If this is a break up a movie, then this is the sad, contemplative moment, when the main character sinks deep in self-doubt and resignation – Again ‘Love’, ‘beauty’ ; “At least at times it knew me” Sigh.
Then a window is opened and the gloomy room is refreshed with fresh air and sunshine. Too Easy is a chirpy, electronic little ode. She’s a bit more optimistic: “I’m not alone I’m not/ The real truth of it all Is that I haven’t lost.” That’s followed by Olsen’s sweet harmonious chorus on the follow up New Love Cassette. This one bops along on a sea of throbbing K-pop keys until it clashes with some deliciously dark Bach-like chords from the string section.
Spring, an upbeat cynical song about how life changes, could have easily been written for a Wilco album. She’s at the mercy of her emotions – bitter at what might have been, perhaps. Children, a house, a future. What we lose. What we take for granted. What we miss.
“How time has revealed how/ Little we know us/ I’ve been too busy/ I should’ve noticed/ Days that keep slipping/ Our lives that I’m missing/ I wish it were true love/ I wish we were kissing.”
What it is demonstrates her own self-correcting, in a tone softer than the grandeur and self-ruin of Lark. The song rides on a dark groove from her guitar that threatens to rock out, but holds back, keeping the tension tight. She’s mocking herself for falling for the whole lovey-dovey thing: “You just want to forget that your heart was full of shit!” I imagine the finger is wagging while she sings.
Tonight is the sweetest song, the most opulent and lush. Olsen sings with a slightly dry and frail vocals over a deep ocean of strings – violins, cellos and bass. It reminds me of an innocent and lusty Jane Birkin, on Histoire de Melody Nelson. But it also feels like a sadder, modern twisted hybrid of a Dusty Springfield number, during her Memphis phase.
Summer, by comparison has a sinister cowboy back beat that remined me of those Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood tunes. That’s not helped by her haunting chorus, lushly layered in ghostly, twangy ethereal reverbs.
“I needed, needed more than love from you…”, she coos on Endgame, “…I wrote it out, wrote it down so you might stay…” Of all the songs on this album, this is Olsen at her most fragile and vulnerable. Her voice is raspy and delicate, wavering, almost in fright. The arrangement is also restrained, with the strings held back, creeping up slowly. It may start quietly but soon morphs into a kind of James Bond movie theme. In the hands of Shirley Bassey this would be a tragic power ballad. “I don’t know how to speak with you, I’d rather be alone/ But somehow whenever I do , I wonder why so long.” I was also reminded of those Serge Gainsbourg records he made with his daughter, Charlotte, which hover between a sultry, sexy mistress and a fragile victim. Then again, she’s a strong female villain in a slithering black jumpsuit. Which is she this time? Why does she make loneliness sound so appealing and sexy?
“I don’t want it all, I have a lot, the worst feeling is gone/ I know how it all comes back, I know too well.”
Olsen concludes on the closer Chance. This is like a 50’s torch song, with more than a scoop or 2 of ‘doo woop’ swagger. There are moments when I wondered if she’d wander off in to ‘Beauty School Drop Out’ (from Grease). No doubt Franky Valli would have loved to cover this one. Yet again more swelling orchestral flourishes to round it off.
All Mirrors seemingly closes a chapter for Olsen. Shutting the book on a relationship and a tour that exhausted her emotionally and physically. This time she’s embracing a new philosophy of self-conviction, shrouded in 12 piece symphonic cloak of melancholy. Her phrasing appears initially simple but quickly expands out to enormous ideas. Throughout the album she toys with futures lost in a breakup, and the fallout, the inability to love again or how to solve that feeling of universal loneliness. Songs start gently, delicately then suddenly huge string arrangements arrive with bellowing synths erupting out of the calm like volcanos of fire.
This is drama personified. And it’s fabulous!
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