Angel Olsen follows last year’s ‘Big Time’ album.
New York radio station 1010 WINS used to operate the slogan: “You give us 22 minutes; we’ll give you the world.”
On Forever Means, Angel Olsen has tried to sketch out destinations old and new in just over 16, with 4 songs recorded during the sessions for her last album Big Time but that missed the cut for that.
For an artist who’s comfortably swum between the stylistic islands ranging from glamorous show tunes to porch Americana, recent life has offered a new sense of fulfillment but also the realization that forever is a place no human being is ever equipped to find.
The quartet of tracks here are cohesive in the sense that it feels the singer and listener are in the same room.
This intimacy is especially acute on opener Nothing’s Free, a torch song with its roots in 3 a.m. jazz and the politics of heartbreak; a desultory snare drum, weeping sax and organ lighting the way towards another double shot of regret.
The title-track which follows is even more naked; a voice, a guitar and the ghost of Patsy Cline gathered around the mic. Here the subject is faintly damned with, ‘I Spent all this time telling myself/How to believe in you’, and whilst the melodrama is unavoidable, the yearning and confusion is sincere.
Less effective is Time Bandits, cut down significantly (viciously?) from the 11-minute version premiered on Instagram almost 3 years ago.
Here the original’s immersive groove is shredded and, whilst lo-fi production is both a choice and a lifestyle, it’s a fraction that simply ends up sounding too raw and primitive.
It’s left to the closer Holding On to make things right again, a sleazier rocking vibe that toughens up what’s been fragile. Using distorted electric chords and a string section giving out a vaguely Eastern flavour, it covers words about being wise after the event, perhaps the only reliable state of mind we can all identify with.
Someone never afraid to let everyone in, on Forever Means Angel Olsen gives us a briefer glimpse than usual through the saloon doors at the entrance to her world.
Although the tangle of emotions is as familiarly engrossing as ever, what it comes wrapped in isn’t quite enough to leave everyone happy.
