But then the current times just hit you and keep things interesting like a good date night without kids. Angel Olsen's third (but 1st I've heard) album "Burn Your Fire for No Witness", released in February, 2014 on Jagjaguar Records is my top record of the year.
This album builds and builds and builds. Listening to the lead track "Unfucktheworld" is an immediate attention grabber of Middle-American music at its best. Then track two cements this as the top shelf record of the year with a tremendously strong build up of fun and strength and drums and fuzzy guitar from sadness and forgiveness, always strong...this track burns!
"I don't know anything"
"I don't know anything"
"But I love you. Yes I do. Yes I do."
Read it, yeah; think it, yeah; but you gotta listen to Olsen's delivery of that verse. Her control of subtle and grand things at once are in play here, nailing them both. It's hard not to get hooked by track two but the knockout punch comes at track three.
"Hi-Five" is the best piece of Twin Peaks-like weirdness and bending I've heard in years. I was floored. Really. Sometimes a song sums up everything about 20th/21st Century living in Midwestern America and comes on strong and new. In this case, imagine Wanda Jackson, Patsy Cline, Cat Power, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, Gene Vincent blending in a whole new and exciting way, recorded without trickery...straight up country folk blues...with rock and guts. Perfect bass and drums, vibrating, buzzing guitar...ugh...smitten.
I am spinning this over and over and over. I never would have heard this had it not been for Olsen's performance on Letterman in June, 2014. I was not familiar with her until then, but I found out she's from St. Louis (I've got to follow up on that as this just doesn't compute). Webster Groves, U-city maybe, but St. Louis? If I'm wrong on my hunch, I'll eat crow slingers with onions and Provel on top. I hope to get an honest assessment of that claim very soon.
Update: January 13, 2015. Olsen is indeed from the City of St. Louis as confirmed by her PR.
This is the most complete record I've heard in 2014. Ups and downs and songwriting and fun and rock and sad and real and sorry. Every song is strong.
Check this out for ragin' full on video of my favorite track off the record, Hi-Five:
Think the vocals in that production needed Macbook trickery? Think again. Olsen knocked it out live on Letterman, a moment that to me transcends the album's recording.
Unbelievable performance.
Throughout the record, the drums are inventive and fun and fill-laden, the bass is determined. But the vocals and melodies are so damn strong and true...what if Mazzie Star had an upper cut? Subversive or mainstream, it hits on all angles. If this were on every jukebox in the Midwest, I'd still drop quarters and select it noon or midnight. I know one thing, if I see someone with an Angel Olsen shirt on, I'm going to introduce myself, hug/shake hands, see eye-to-eye and hopefully be friends for a long time.
I can't think of a record getting better in the near future, but I've been saying that for years.
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