Artist: Angel Olsen
Album: My Woman
Reviewed By: Monica Swinick
MY WOMAN is proof that Angel Olsen continues to uncover and convey the unknown, yet somehow understood truths of lonesomeness and romance; with the same ethereal voice that is both fervent and introverted.
“Intern” opens the album and branches out of Olsen’s norm with synth, which is unheard of to this point in her discography. While songs like “Give It Up” are reminiscent of her 2014 sophomore album Burn Your Fire for No Witness, most of MY WOMAN gapingly contrasts and takes some risks– unveiling a new era of Angel Olsen. She lifts some of the lo-fi folk haze that characterized previous releases, but not too much, keeping enough to sustain her nostalgia. In the album’s second released single, “Shut Up Kiss Me,” Olsen tries her hand at being assertive in a way that we haven’t seen before with lines like “Stop your crying/ It’s alright.” Her familiar poised attitude, however, is retained in “Never Be Mine” and “Not Gonna Kill You.” The album gradually slows as it nears the end. “Pops” closes out the album, but comes nowhere near closure. The emotions she evokes are so painfully tender yet the lyrics, like “Please don’t start/ It hurts to start/ Dreaming, dreaming,” are cutting with agony.
MY WOMAN soothes our desires in admiration for Olsen, but was stylistically unforeseen enough to keep us on our toes for what still lies in her pensive mind and stellar voice.
