<p><span><span>- Returning suddenly with a follow-up record to last year’s <em>All Mirrors</em>, Nashville based singer-songwriter Angel Olsen, isn’t simply rehashing the demos of that release. No, for <em>Whole New Mess</em>, a true spiritual successor, Angel Olsen proves that her biggest strength is her songwriting.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>This fact was immediately clear in her 2016 breakthrough <em>MY WOMAN</em>, and her less polished yet viciously raw <em>Burn Your Fire For No Witness</em>. For lyrics like “<em>To scream the stars out of our universe</em>”, or “<em>The way you scream like something else as a man</em>”, Angel Olsen is a force majeure. So where <em>All Mirrors</em> paired her songwriting and thrilling vocals with a twelve-piece orchestra and was my favourite album of 2020 for it - <em>Whole New Mess</em>, is the same era reimagined, distinctly songwriter driven.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>From the bustling vocal synths of <em>(New Love) Cassette</em>, that possess a reverb-like effect, to the sparse yet ridiculously climactic <em>Lark Song</em>, <em>Whole New Mess </em>is a very spiritual album, able to capture both the gentle desires that Angel Olsen sings of and her brutal vocals that contrast. <em>(We Are All Mirrors)</em>, originally a string-driven James Bond sounding ballad, lives out a new life exploring grunge rock - it’s an unexpected highlight among an album that focuses so heavily on calmer sounding instrumentation.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Likewise, the <em>All Mirrors</em> highlight <em>Chance</em> appears as <em>Forever Love</em>, with just as much of a breathtaking pulse as the original. Instead of emotive strings that might have been stolen from an early 20th-century ballad, acoustic guitar fills the void with an oddly captivating result. Soft vocal delay throughout the track’s second half acts like watercolour on a painting, blending together the fraying genres of art-pop, folk and rock that have made Angel Olsen’s career flourish so far.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>It’s not entirely re-imagined material on <em>Whole New Mess</em>: two stunning new songs appear. The titular <em>Whole New Mess</em> opens the record with stripped back guitars and reverb-drenched vocals, as Olsen contemplates death, “<em>Won’t be long now before it’s really showing / It’s every season where I’m going / When it fades to back, I’ll be getting back on track</em>.” The other track, <em>Waving, Smiling</em> feels like a pairing of <strong>Jessica Pratt</strong> and <strong>Julien Baker</strong>, with gentle guitar plucking that’s not too far removed from the harpsichord of <strong>Joanna Newsom</strong>.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Where <em>All Mirrors </em>took Angel Olsen to a baroque, grand sound, a necessary step forward as a musician, on <em>Whole New Mess</em>, she resolves to return to her roots: evocative vocals and lyrics that fade the world away.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>- Sean Tayler.</span></span></p>
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