With “Burn Your Fire For No Witness”, Angel Olsen has assembled a record she says felt wholly representative of her vision, a set of songs that take on the shape and skin of punk and country and folk music, sung through a slew of different microphones. Declarations of independence are often bracing, but rarely do they illuminate so ferociously the lonesome reality of being on your own.
There is a lot of heartbreak on “Burn Your Fire For No Witness”, as well as a lot of pleasing anachronism; a lot of hard-won resignation and what you might call stern vulnerability, a quality that Angel Olsen shares with other songwriters like Joni Mitchell without sounding at all like Mitchell. Her soprano can be a delicate and ghostly thing … but Olsen’s quaver holds your gaze, using her vibrato for effect, not whining or crumbling.” I love the track “Windows” Angel Olsen’s previous 2012 album “Half Way Home” was a quiet, plaintive affair — a low-key country waltz with minimal, yet affecting instrumentation. Conversely, “Burn Your Fire” found her plugging in and turning up the faders. An album of closeness and distance, heartache and heartbreak. Olsen navigates these ups and downs with her voice as captain. It’s a mesmerizing instrument, sweet, tranquil then suddenly intense in an ascendant vibrato
The Fat Angel Sings 