Angel Olsen and her band made it clear they’ll be very comfortable opening for Arcade Fire later this year. They began with “High & Wild” from 2014’s “Burn Your Fire For No Witness”, expanding from a roots-rock ramble to a gnarly climax built around a bluesy power chord riff. From there they launched directly into “Shut Up Kiss Me,” a song that grips you as urgently as its subject matter demands, from its bracing rock ‘n’ roll cadence to Olsen’s howling, bellowing, tour-de-force vocal performance. Two more straight-up rockers followed, with “Acrobat,” the hushed intro from Olsen’s 2012 debut “Half Way Home”, serving as a bridge to the set’s less visceral but even more compelling second half.
Olsen spent her last three songs unfurling three tracks from the back half of My Woman in sequence. There was “Sister,” the eight-minute epic that serves as the album’s centerpiece, building slowly from a low-key Roy Orbison-via-Velvet Underground ballad into the kind of glorious guitar symphony I wish Wilco was still writing. There was “Those Were The Days,” a song that imagines what Bonnie Raitt’s attempt at dream-pop might sound like, extended into a beautiful series of peaks and valleys. And there was “Woman,” another eight-minute swoon that begins as a weepy country ballad before going full Joplin and, ultimately, taking its sweet time descending from the mountaintop. These songs gave the audience a chance to sit back and appreciate what Angel Olsen’s band members bring to the table. It’s one thing to burn through some rock songs with power and fury, and it’s quite another to make such lengthy excursions surge and soar.
Angel Olsen performs in Chicago for Pitchfork Music Festival 2017
thanks Stereogum
The Fat Angel Sings 