Early in my experience as
a customer of the now ubiquitous
streaming service industry,
I think Angel Olsen came up
either as something that was
currently hot or as a recommended
listen. That was the year
All Mirrors came out, and for some
reason, maybe even because the
cover photo intrigued me,
I gave it a listen or two or three.
I remember liking it a lot–
I liked its bombast, its chamber
pop vibe, it’s nod to what felt
like pop music from a different
era, maybe even pre-rock and roll.
I never bought that record, but
a few years later I scooped up
this one, her fifth studio album,
Big Time. Outside of her distinctive
voice, a voice drenched in reverb,
this is a very different kind of thing.
Is this a country record? Maybe, but
country in the most classic sense.
Are these great sounding drums? Yes,
Is this music kind of sad, mostly love
songs filled with longing and heart-
ache? Indeed, but not completely
humorless: “Why’d you have to go
and make it weird?” For a moment,
a little bit of amusement in a sea
of disappointment. For as slow and
quiet as most of these songs are,
it’s a big sounding record. And if
you can bear it emotionally, these
are lovely tunes, melodically sweet,
lyrically smart, instrumentally
minimal, but somehow still large,
full sounding. And perhaps, from
memory that may be a little bit
faulty, the thing Big Time has in
common with All Mirrors is that
grandiosity, and that feeling that
these are tunes from another time,
and of course that voice, which
is, after all, the main attraction.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Big Time, Jagjaguwar Records, 2023, opaque pink double vinyl, mastered at 45 RPM.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 