{"id":13691,"date":"2017-12-07T05:30:33","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T10:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13691"},"modified":"2017-12-07T08:29:27","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T13:29:27","slug":"album-review-angel-olsen-phases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/07\/album-review-angel-olsen-phases\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Angel Olsen — Phases"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Across her first three albums and an EP, Asheville’s own Angel Olsen<\/a> has carved out a musical niche of her own. Her music is perhaps best described as a collection of familiar, well-worn melodies and styles to which she applies her own stamp. Her most recent release of new material, 2016’s My Woman<\/i> drew upon a number of subgenres including 80s alterna-rock (\u201cIntern\u201d) and Phil Spector girl-group pop (\u201cNever Be Mine\u201d).<\/p>\n

Olsen’s latest release is a collection of previously-unreleased material: outtakes, demo recordings, b-sides and covers, plus two (relatively) new songs. The grab-bag nature of Phases<\/i> means that the songs aren’t meant to hold together as a cohesive whole, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthwhile set of songs.<\/p>\n

The most notable cut on Phases<\/i> is its opening track. Recorded and released on an anti-Trump various-artists collection called Our First 100 Days<\/i>, \u201cFly on Your Wall\u201d is a starkly arranged tune built around a languid Olsen vocal, some insistent guitar strumming and defiantly plodding, behind-the-beat and primitive drumming.<\/p>\n

Recorded during the My Woman<\/i> sessions, \u201cSpecial\u201d feels a bit like Angel Olsen fronting the Jesus and Mary Chain, if the band spent the first half of the song playing in another room. There’s a woozy, mid-period Velvet Underground vibe to the song, which feels out of tune (even if it’s not); that quality is almost certainly a feature not a bug.<\/p>\n

The demo recording \u201cOnly With You\u201d adopts the approach Liz Phair used in her pre-fame \u201cGirlysound\u201d tapes: up close and almost uncomfortably personal. The song uses a favorite Olsen technique of subtly turning up the volume and intensity of the instrumental accompaniment as the song unfolds. Still, the arrangement remains quite understated as the song concludes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll Right Now\u201d (definitely not<\/i> the 1970 hit by Free) leverages Olsen’s breathiest vocal approach; how one feels about the track will depend largely on whether back-of-the-throat breathy singing is seen as appealing or tiresome. Perhaps as a balance, Phases<\/i> is sequenced such that the following track, \u201cSans,\u201d finds Olsen’s vocals adopting a faraway, somewhat nasal tone. The lone electric guitar is placed even farther back in the sonic landscape.<\/p>\n

Those shifting uncomfortably in their seats through the first half of Phases<\/i> as they wish for a tune with some instrumental grit and muscle are rewarded with \u201cSweet Dreams.\u201d Not the 1983 single from Eurythmics, this \u201cSweet Dreams\u201d has a freaky late-sixties folk-rock vibe, and it features some of the album’s best \u2013 and most varied \u2013 singing from Olsen. The instrumentation \u2013 most notably a deceptively simple guitar solo \u2013 is also top-notch.<\/p>\n

For \u201cCalifornia\u201d it’s back to the spare approach. Shades of Nancy Sinatra (with Lee Hazlewood) can be found in the tune, but a strong case could be made that Joni Mitchell and Pearls Before Swine are musical touchstones here as well.<\/p>\n

Olsen’s cover of Bruce Springsteen’s \u201cTougher Than the Rest\u201d is another of those love-it-or-hate-it tunes, with a deeply affected vocal and an out-of-tune guitar that’s dialed down nearly to the point of inaudibility. A reading of Roky Erickson’s \u201cFor You\u201d sounds as if it might be from the same demo session, though it features a more appealing vocal and louder (not to mention more interesting) guitar accompaniment.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow Many Disasters\u201d is a fragile and spare singer-songwriter confessional style tune; the minimalist arrangement suits the song perfectly. \u201cMay as Well\u201d is cut from similar cloth. Phases<\/i> closes with \u201cEndless Road,\u201d a slice of ersatz cowboy folk: a tune written by acclaimed tunesmith Hoyt Axton and originally performed on the TV series Bonanza<\/i> as a duet with Pernell Roberts. Olsen changes the key and dials back the original’s sentimentality in favor of something a bit deeper.<\/p>\n

Listeners who appreciate Angel Olsen for her arranging and instrumental skills are advised to lay hands on all of her other work first; for them, Phases<\/i> is worthwhile but should be their last purchase. Those new to Olsen’s work are cautioned to start elsewhere instead. But anyone who has enjoyed the singer-songwriter’s work live and\/or on record will find that Phases<\/i> helps round out the listener’s understanding of Angel Olsen’s musical world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Across her first three albums and an EP, Asheville’s own Angel Olsen has carved out a musical niche of her own. Her music is perhaps best described as a collection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19,30,39],"tags":[202,237],"class_list":["post-13691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-compilation","category-folk","category-indie","tag-angel-olsen","tag-asheville","cat-6-id","cat-19-id","cat-30-id","cat-39-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13693,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691\/revisions\/13693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}