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August 28, 2020 - Jagjaguwar
Singer-songwriter Angel Olsen’s new album Whole New Mess is a whole new take on the body of work from her acclaimed 2019 All Mirrors album, and it’s more intimate, a return to how I like her best—minimal instrumentation, stripped down production, and her powerful voice front and center. Olsen is a master of high contrast, and the spaces between the colors her voice can sing are vast like ancient canyons. The songs on Whole New Mess were recorded in a church-turned-recording-studio called The Unknown in Anacortes, Washington, and Olsen expands upon the range of her voice by positioning herself specifically in the architecture of that space during the recording sessions. At times, she is close to the mic, at times she is far away, and at times she layers close and far on top of each other, singing with her overtones and conversing with her echo. The guitar beneath her is like a living shadow that enhances her glow, sometimes soft and strummy, sometimes electric and dirty, and sometimes undulating like ripples on water. The overall effect is of one luxuriating in the lonely halls of grief and transition, one transformed by experience into something superhuman but ephemeral. ☔