Angel Olsen’s magnificent album ‘My Woman’ on clear vinyl in September. The 29-year-old singer-songwriter came up as a touring member of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s backing band in 2010, playing guitar and duetting with the eccentric folk and country hero (a.k.a. Will Oldham). Despite her increasingly prominent solo career, she’s often labeled as one of his disciples, posited as a protégé even as she has issued three acclaimed albums where her muse is wholly her own. That miscategorization has led to others: When Olsen began releasing her own stripped-back, mournful folk works — 2011’s Strange Cacti EP and 2012’s Half Way Home .
When she added a full-blown band for 2014’s breakthrough Burn Your Fire For No Witness — an ambitious album that was as much fuzzy, blown-out rock music as folk — the gloomy reputation followed her. Olsen, whose voice tends to ring out in a near-tears tremble, has been reluctantly framed as the weepy poster girl of contemporary folk rock, forever salting her wounds for the sake of her art.
My Woman, which arrives on September 2nd, is an unexpected departure for Olsen, her most diverse record yet. It’s not quite synth pop, at least not all of it, but from its first song, “Intern,” she might have had you fooled. Olsen directed and stars in the video for “Intern,” where she plays a tortured, “super famous” pop-star type in a silver wig and Britney-esque headset mic, singing along to moody chords fit for a Julee Cruise ballad. “I don’t care what the papers say,” she croons, turning to the camera as she ignores a sheepish, young interviewer. “It’s just another intern with a résumé.” The song was an anomaly in Olsen’s two-year-long recording process for My Woman, a onetime studio experiment that just ended up fitting. “[I thought], How funny would it be if it was so misleading?” Olsen says. “But what I realized is if I used different instruments like synth and piano, and went away from my guitar for a minute, I could sing differently. It opened up all of these opportunities to use my voice more, to be less preoccupied with trying to be super clever with my lyrics.”
Angel Olsen – “Sister” from ‘MY WOMAN’ out September 2nd, 2016 on Jagjaguwar Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 