Angel Olsen: Big Time | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- I saw Angel Olsen by chance at Laneway back in day and as a sun shower broke out during her set, Olsen, in a thoroughly charming accent, invited the crowd to come into the Showbag Pavilion and encouraged those already safe from the soaking to make room for our increasingly damp compatriots. To use that as launch pad, Angel Olsen makes awfully welcoming music and it's a style that’s deeply entrenched on her sixth album, Big Time. Big Time is an album of my favourite kind. Rather than collating a great collection of songs, each of the ten tracks across this release are interconnected and interdependent. It’s been put together in a way where one moment shakes the hand of one that’s come before it and exchanged a sincere compliment only to seconds later pay that same respect to the moment that follows it. There’s a cohesion and togetherness that I can’t get enough of.

Olsen has always had a country-tinged undercurrent that ties her music together and All The Good Times is a shining example of that. Mellow, near lethargic organ pads are the bedrock and lapsteel guitars weep and wail their way through. Brass stabs appear with greater frequency as the song comes to a close, introducing a little Shotgun Willie energy. Big Time puts forward a similar appeal and starts to lean heavily into what I alluded in earlier, that everything needs what comes either side of it. The twinkling of pianos needs the sickly sweet lap steels which in their turn needed Angel Olsen’s increased twang on the eponymous track. Between Dream Thing and All The Flowers, it’s a real smooth ride over gorgeous instrumentals. On All The Flowers¸ the sonic weight subsides in favour of emotional weight. Lavish strings, Olsen’s voice meandering in a lost, dour way, ever so delicate keys tiptoeing their way through, gentle, so as to not disturb the pure ataraxy. Right Now isn’t an immediate departure but does take you on a well-paced trip from these calm beginnings to an all emphatic close. Speaking of emphatic closes, Go Home would have been a perfect way to end the record but is instead a marker for the turn down the final road and is glorious. In another sense, the way this record glides off into the sunset off the back of Chasing The Sun is a perfect final moment; it brings up all the emotions we’ve covered so far and Olsen’s whispering and faltering voice brings you right into the pull. There’s some string sections that whisk you away into a dreamland and you’re half expecting Gene Wilder to start singing about pure imagination.

I had this album on repeat during this cold week that’s been. Reading and to listen to Big Time from front to back and on repeat for days on end has been a treat. If you like Angel Olsen, you’ll like this record. If you’re new to Angel Olsen, you’ll also like record. If I haven't hammered it home yet: it’s one of those releases that is great improved by consuming it in it’s entirety and maybe, I reckon, more than once.

- Matt Lynch.