ANGEL OLSEN
Big Time (Jagjaguwar)
As with its predecessors, 2016’s My Woman and All Mirrors from 2019, the cover of Angel Olsen’s new LP Big Time is a photo of its creator, instantly establishing it as the third in a trilogy of epic personal dramas.
She’s long written about identity, often as something to flee from – “Want to be someone else, not me, but another”, she confessed on Special – while Big Time has been billed as a cathartic coming to terms with her sexuality. There’s still plenty of painful soul searching and self-doubt: “I feel like someone else but I’m still trying,” she ventures on standout track Go Home. Making music seems to be her way of figuring things out, which makes listening to her albums an intense and intimate experience.
However uncertain of her own emotions she might be, Big Time is another astonishingly self-assured album, pitch-perfect in absolutely every respect: songs, lyrics, instrumentation, production, artwork. A stunning collection of tracks that sound like timeless classics from the very first spin.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
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