Angel Olsen - Big Time Review
On Big Time, Olsen is at her most introspective. Delving into her own experiences like never before.
On what is now her sixth full length release Olsen continues to explore evermore intimate and revealing topics for us to climb inside and experience with her. I think it's safe to say that a decade o Angel Olsen has established herself as one of the forefront voices of her genre. Her ability to translate these unique stories in such a way that we’re able to find something personal and relatable within, is no easy task, and yet something on which she consistently delivers. Now with Big Time we get a mixture of the thoughtful self-observation we've seen before combined with some real world emotional conflict.
On previous albums a lot of the stories, thoughts and processes were narratives from within, and perhaps the inability to escape the confines of her own mind. This time however, Big Time takes on a new dimension for Olsen as she looks outward to things much more tactile as an influence. Having explored themes of heartbreak and transformation in her previous work, we now have an album that follows up these explorations, perhaps too perfectly. After 2019’s All Mirrors, Olsen, now in her thirties and enjoying a new relationship, comes out to her parents, allowing herself the opportunity to start living and revel as her true self. No doubt she must’ve sensed something far different for herself on the horizon creatively, but for her parents to tragically pass in months that followed. Olsen has managed somehow to use this, the life lived between love and anguish as a clear motivation for this album and has created something really quite wonderful.
The album starts off with a nice little rattle around the drum kit, instantly commanding the attention of the room, before what sounds like a quiet whirr of an electric organ joins in to thread everything together. I could imagine this introduction, sat in a bustling country bar, as everyone stops to sit up and listen. Olsens beautifully Country voice echoes quietly over the top of the track, ensuring that we’re all paying attention now. All of a sudden, a soft eruption, led by Olsens voice but joined by more echoes, the drums, the strings, “thanks for the free ride, and all the good times” sings Olsen, content, saying goodbye. perhaps to previous love, perhaps to a previous incarnation of themselves. A slide guitar drifts in to relieve Olsen and to lead the outro. A full minute passes allowing us to dwell on Olsens words. Somehow, only weeks in, this feels so classic already, exactly the kind of thing I could imagine being shown again and again on reruns of Top of the Pops. The sort of thing my mum would’ve made sure we were all quiet for so she could really hear it.
The title track ‘Big Time’ largely continues along that same trajectory, without the soft understated peaks of the opener. A story of having to endure loss in order to reach this point in time and to be falling in love again. The closing words, repeated here “I’m loving you big time”, no doubt a reflection of more than just a new flame but surely a sentiment shared between herself and her recently lost mother. ‘Dream Thing’ offers a lush, much more contemplative sound. Olsens Voice echoes throughout the song as she looks for meaning in a dream about the future. “I was looking at old you, looking at who you'd become”
These songs set the tone of the album quite nicely from the start. It's these moments where Olsen alone takes the spotlight, where she has consistently excelled for me. Yes she can write a great single and an earworm, but her ability to understand the strength in absence, knowing when and where to step back, or to leave something out. Beautifully utilising the quiet, drawing us in and forcing the listener to hone in and notice the details. Her voice alone is so compelling and pure that it alone can carry her message should it be called for, and it's those moments of quiet that really allows us to reflect and understand and feel along with her. It’s these moments that really pull the album as an artwork together and where some of her most affecting work lies.