ANGEL OLSEN: BURN YOUR FIRE FOR NO WITNESS (2014)
1) Unfucktheworld; 2)
Forgiven/Forgotten; 3) Hi-Five; 4) White Fire; 5) High & Wild; 6) Lights
Out; 7) Stars; 8) Iota; 9) Dance Slow Decades; 10) Enemy; 11) Windows.
I hate to say it because it might seem
seriously unfair to some of my readers, but I have to say it anyway: in my
opinion, albums that focus exclusively on the artist's (real or imaginary)
relation with his/her other simply do not work in the 21st century any longer.
Unless this subject simply serves as a generic theme for some catchy pop hooks,
chances of the artist offering us some deeply original and consistently captivating soulful insights are simply close to
zero — even when the artist is as naturally gifted, as striving, and as
tasteful as Angel Olsen. She is all these things, yes, and they are disclosed
even better on her second album than they were on the first, and yet, even
after three or four listens, my reaction is still close to "I really can't
wait for this to end".
It's not as if she were intentionally running
some single idea into the ground — on the contrary, Burn Your Fire For No Witness is a formal expansion on already
conquered territory, with deeper production, stronger reliance on electric
instruments, an amalgamation of folk and country motives with psycho-pop and
experimental rock. Throw in that husky voice, wobbling between harshness and
tenderness, acceptance and rejection, vulnerability and whatever is the
opposite of vulnerability, and here's solid proof that women have won over men
these days, since the female equivalent of Bon Iver at least makes music that
does not make you want to sign the petition for an executive order banning the
use of log cabins all across America.
And still, there is a problem, and that problem
is: I do not believe this music.
Listening to this, to me, is like watching a magic show delivered by an
apprentice whose rubber bands and third arms show all over the place. I hear
echoes of all her influences (which remain largely the same as they used to
be), I hear commitment, but it's like the spells she tries to cast are totally
misplaced, or like the ingredients she uses for them are all made in Taiwan or
something.
Case in point: ʽWhite Fireʼ, the longest and
also one of the sparsest ballads on the album, sounds like a cover of a lost
Leonard Cohen song from the Songs Of
Love And Hate era — same Cohen-endorsed acoustic picking sequence, same
simple poetic verse structure, same mood of loneliness and desolation. But
where a real Cohen can (not always, but frequently) put me in a state of trance
with this simple trickery, Angel Olsen sounds like a poser in comparison. (I
stress the in comparison bit, because
in real life everything works in comparison, and if you happen to be a young
fan who admires Olsen but has not yet had a chance to seriously check out
Cohen, I wish you a long, happy, fruitful, and instructive life ahead). Is it
just because Leonard was first and she comes so very very next? Or is it
because Leonard's poetry was what it really was — serious poetry, continuing
and deepening an old, respectable, well-studied, and perfectly understood
tradition — whereas Olsen's lyrics sound like half-decent, uneducated,
unenlightened imitations? Is it because, even when you cannot suggest any
direct interpretation, Leonard still ends up sounding like he's really into something serious and deeply
troubling, whereas Olsen's soulful admonition of "if you've still got some
light in you then go before it's gone / burn your fire for no witness, it's the
only way it's done" seems to be addressed to nobody in particular and to
signify nothing in particular?
Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old guy, because on
YouTube, people behave in a far more simple manner — they just say "She
sounds like a female Leonard Cohen! How beautiful!" and leave it at that.
Well... something tells me that perhaps, fifty years from now, people will still
be listening to those old Cohen records without going "He sounds like a
male Angel Olsen! How charming!" At least if there was a shred of
something new to this second-hand magic of a monotonous mantra stretched over
seven minutes and two chords, that could help me out — but when a clear lack of
effort is being passed for artistic humility and «focus on the essential», it
just irritates me.
It's a bit easier when she embarks on her
journey to become the female Roy Orbison rather than Leonard Cohen — the songs
are shorter, less pretentious, a bit less monotonous, and incorporate a
toe-tapping element that always helps out when you're not a master charmer by
trade. So, with lots of psychedelically distorted guitars and happy-tragic
vocalizing, ʽHi-Fiveʼ is probably one of the better numbers on the record, with
an intentionally simplified, but not trivialized, approach to lyrics — the lady
is searching for somebody who'd agree to be her partner in loneliness. Once
again, she does not win me over: that "I feel so lonesome, I could
cry..." bit does not feel particularly lonesome. But at least it's
solidly within the pop tradition, and the whole thing ends up being moderately
catchy and somewhat fun.
More often, the songs end up between these two
extremes, though, and end up being too poppy to be serious and too serious to
be poppy. The opening title ʽUnfucktheworldʼ sounds like something you'd
expect to see on a hardcore punk record, but the song, like every other song on
here, is still about Me and You, and I take this to mean that the world is
fucked because Me and You cannot find an ideal understanding, and as soon as
that understanding is found, The World Becomes Unfucked, and the lion lies
down with the lamb. But for now, all that we have established is that "I
am the only one now", delivered in a semi-frightened cold murmur that
probably suggests an element of dehumanization. But who dehumanized her? How
did it happen? Was it serious? Was it inevitable? Is there a cure? Does Prozac
help? Can we help? Could we at least
suggest one extra chord in the musical backing?..
Her singing is perhaps most pretty, but also
most confusing, on the last track, ʽWindowsʼ. Just like ʽTiniest Seedʼ on the
previous record, this last track seems to offer an optimistic way out —
"won't you open a window sometime, what's so wrong with the light?" —
except it is not clear who she is addressing the question to: the intangible
Other or to her own self. "You" suggests the Other, but it is around
herself that she spent weaving a frail web of darkness and loneliness for the
previous ten songs, so perhaps Me and You simply got merged in one (not too
difficult to do considering a common base in loneliness). Or maybe there's a
third character in here somewhere, like a fairy of light and hope floating down
on two poor would-be lovers and poking them around: "Why can't you see?
Are you blind? Are you dead? Are you all right?" Problem is, they're not
all right but they're not all wrong, either. As a tear-down-the-wall conclusion
to an album that has just spent forty minutes trying to convince us that there was a wall in the first place (and
failing to properly convince me, for one), ʽWindowsʼ feels just a tad phony the
same way the rest of the album sounded just a tad phony.
I mean, I just can't help it, sorry, but when a
song like ʽStarsʼ proclaims that "I feel so much at once that I could
scream", and then proceeds to murmur and hum instead of, you know,
actually screaming, «phony» is really quite a mild word to express my
dissatisfaction with the final product. Sure, we can always find a cop-out —
like suggesting that the murmur and hum is a meaningful artistic sublimation
for loud emotional outburst (and God forbid that Angel Olsen would end up
pigeonholed as an emo kid, anyway), or that the entire song is really about
closing one's eyes and freezing on the spot — but whatever be the cop-out,
intuitively I still feel a mismatch between words, voice, and music, no matter
which of the tracks I turn to. Nice try, for sure, but with a communicative
breakdown like that, I will not pretend to pass this for a communicative
success — nor, for that matter, will I admit that a selection of rave reviews
for the album had me even for one second convinced that the reviewers in
question were more successful in their attempts at communication than poor little
me. But I will refrain from a thumbs down, if only because I still respect
this sort of effort, and because in this kind of business, it is very easy to
degrade yourself to the state of pretentious whiner (cue Justin Vernon again),
which is something that Olsen has securely safeguarded herself against.
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