ANGEL OLSEN: HALF WAY HOME (2012)
1) Acrobat; 2) The Waiting; 3)
Safe In The Womb; 4) Lonely Universe; 5) Can't Wait Until Tomorrow; 6) Always
Half Strange; 7) You Are Song; 8) Miranda; 9) The Sky Opened Up; 10) Free; 11)
Tiniest Seed.
Strange, strange times, these 2010s —
everything is alive, everything is dead, everything is in between, call it the
Schrödinger decade if you wish. Here is Angel Olsen, a fresh face (although, as
of 2017 when I am writing this text, she already has a six-year solo career
behind her back, a time span that was enough for the Beatles to proceed from
ʽLove Me Doʼ to ʽA Day In The Lifeʼ) who wants to put her own spin on the genre
of acoustic-folk-based singer-songwriting, taking her cues from Joni Mitchell,
Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, and maybe all these lesser known and more poorly
remembered female heroes of the past like Laura Nyro and Janis Ian. A genre
whose heyday ended about four decades ago, but hey, it's the 2010s, a time when
anything goes, when a nostalgic revival can no longer be called a nostalgic
revival, because «nostalgic» presumes a clear distinction between past,
present, and future, and we no longer have one. Future is past, past is future,
and present is an ephemeral piece of nonsense.
Anyway, Angel Olsen. We do not know that much
about her yet, except that she comes from St. Louis, Missouri, she sang backup
vocals for Will Oldham for a short while, she released her first homebrewn
recordings on the short self-produced EP Strange
Cacti in 2011, and she got picked up by the tiny indie label Bathetic
Records in 2012. Half Way Home, her
proper LP debut, appeared one year later, and featured eleven songs that were
mostly written, performed, and recorded by Olsen on her own, with occasional
help from some of Oldham's musicians (Ben Boye on organ and Emmett Kelly, also
the leader of The Cairo Gang, on guitar). Being quite low-key, the record did
not make much of an impact other than on an occasional admirer-reviewer (Laura
Snapes wrote a gushing novel on the album at Pitchfork), but now that we all
have the opportunity to compare it with Olsen's most recent major success, I
think it's only fair to say that the lady comes out fully fleshed-out and
accomplished here — skipping the ʽLove Me Doʼ stage altogether and aiming
straight for a Rubber Soul kind of
result, if not higher.
Of the four possible aspects of the budding
singer-songwriter — musician, melodicist, lyricist, vocalist — I think it is
fairly safe to cross out the first two from the start. Olsen plays a nice
acoustic guitar, and has clearly excelled at her homework studying those Drake
and Mitchell chords, but, like 99% of indie kids these days, exploring
non-trivial, innovative ways of riding her instrument is clearly not a priority
(admittedly, it is not even clear what a «non-trivial, innovative way» of
playing folk-based acoustic guitar would sound like these days). Likewise, the
melodies aren't particularly interesting because most of these instrumental and
vocal patterns had been worn thin the aforementioned four decades ago; the only
point of curiosity is that, from time to time, she also tries to integrate a
retro pop sound in the tapestry, taking occasional cues from Roy Orbison
(especially in the vocal hook department) and from those British kids who were
all right back in the day (funny thing, every time she sings
"sometimes..." on ʽFreeʼ, I feel a strong urge to finish it for her
with "...I feel I gotta get away", though, of course, the majority of
Angel's young fans from today probably won't even recognize the reference).
As a lyricist, she's okay. Technically, this is
an album of love songs; almost every single song is a soliloquy addressed to an
imaginary partner, and the real good news — maybe the one thing that makes me instantaneously biased in favor of the
record — is that, believe it or not, this is not one of the miriads of
«break-up albums» that singer-songwriters tend to be associated with these
days. The basic underlying concept here is that of love offering temporary
relief and respite from fear and darkness: the heroine was ʽSafe In The Wombʼ
before finding herself in this ʽLonely Universeʼ, surrounded by strange and
ugly things, and now she is searching for safety, tranquility, and
understanding that cannot be reached on one's own. Not an entirely new concept,
of course, but at least a fresher one than a ten thousandth attempt at venting
your frustration over an inexperienced teenage love affair, and, most
importantly, without annoyingly self-aggravating fits of narcissism that tend
to plague these attempts. "Who cares I'm not a moralist / I'm just a lady
with some time", she declares in the very first track, and somehow I doubt
we'll ever get a line like that from the likes of either Adele or Joanna
Newsom.
But the main point of attraction, and probably
the one and only that managed to so quickly endear her to the fanbase, is her
voice and manner — alternating between the serious schoolteacher tone to a
strangely fascinating pop vibrato à la
Roy Orbison, not necessarily limited to the poppier, rhythmic tunes like ʽThe
Waitingʼ and ʽFreeʼ. In a world that has probably seen and heard it all, it's
not a totally unique voice, but an interesting one: thick, rich on low
overtones, although it seems as if she is intentionally trying to sing much
lower than her natural range (like a soprano reaching for contralto) — but it
feels okay, symbolic of the idea of life dragging you down, if you know what I
mean. That said, I totally disagree with the frequently expressed opinion about
sadness being the overwhelming
emotion on these songs: on the contrary, Half
Way Home feels like a pretty happy album, except that happiness is
something that the heroine is looking for and striving to achieve, rather than
an accomplished state.
The only proverbially «sad» song on the album
is its only epic-length track, ʽLonely Universeʼ, which drags on for seven
minutes and does indeed deal with loss and separation — no wonder it is also
the weakest track on the entire album, a slow, lethargic waltz where you are
supposed to empathize with a chorus that goes "goodbye, sweet Mother
Earth, without you now I'm a lonely universe". It is not melodically
stronger or weaker than anything else on here — it's just that its bleakness
sounds contrived and generic next to the far more mixed feelings on the other
tracks, and also that no Angel Olsen song deserves to be seven minutes long.
Give me something short and poppy like ʽFreeʼ instead — it might be a 100%
Buddy Holly / Roy Orbison / Pete Townshend rip-off, but with Olsen's voice
behind it, the vibe gets a new reading that combines tenderness with depth and
maturity, or something like that.
And basically, that's it. If you want to wax
philosophical on the inner strength and magic of the album, go read the
Pitchfork review about how the main theme of this album is "a thoughtful,
never morbid belief in the finality of death" and how its greatest asset
is "its openness to what could be, to potential" (funny, I always
thought that the greatest song about "openness to what could be" was
McCartney's ʽWhy Don't We Do It In The Road?ʼ). I can only sum up by saying
that I enjoyed listening to this stuff — that, upon my third listen, I remained
un-irritated by most of it, and that, in itself, is already a big plus, though
hardly worth a well-deserved thumbs up: passable lyrics and a special vocal
timbre are not enough, after all, to cover for a total lack of original
songwriting or interesting musical arrangements. But sufficiently decent, I
guess, for the oh-so-vague standards of 2012.
Great pick, George! I had seen a few of Angel's songs on Youtube, but I never expected to find her here.
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