Angel Olsen’s new album,ย My Woman, will be released on September 2 on Jagjaguwar and she’s playing Columbia Theater on 26.10. ย indieBerlin caught up with her to ask her about what she’s up to these days.ย
While she grew up in St Louis, Missouri, she moved to Chicago in her early twenties. There, she was discovered by Jon Hency through Myspace. He invited her to record some songs for a compilation album and thus began her musical career, with the recording ofย Strange Cactiย in 2010. Made up of songs about love, heartbreak and topics which usually make up a first recording, it was followed byย Half Way Home in 2012. In the meantime, she had gone on tour as part of Billy “Prince” Bonnie’s backup band.
Olsen then took a break to focus on her own music, and garnered a lot of attention in 2014 whenย Burn Your Fire For No Witness was released. It coincided with her departure from Chicago and she’s since then been in a non-stop cycle of touring and promoting.
My Woman is also a departure from Olsen’s previous records, with side A consisting of energetic yet melodic songs, and side B is made up of more sensual and reflective songs than previously heard. All and all, Angel Olsen matured over time, or as she put it, she’s relaxed into her songs.
indieberlin: I missed you last time you were in Berlin
Angel Olsen: Yeah I was there for a day.
indieberlin: What have you been up to since?
Angel Olsen: So Iโve been travelling since before that press trip. I had finished the videos (to “Intern” and “Shut Up Kiss Me”). So I made the record, went to Portugal, came home for a couple weeks, made the two videos that came out to my singles. Got an ulcer, finished mixing my record, went on tour for like five days with an old band and then I did the press trip right after. I then came home for two days and did a tour of Canada, Alaska and Iceland. I donโt know why, why there? But we didnโt know if the album was going to be ready, we werenโt sure.
Weโd always wanted to go to those places. So, finished the tour in Iceland and went to New York, finished half of one third video that Iโm directing, and then did press in New York for four days. Now Iโm home and then I leave again on Thursday. So if that gives you any perspective, thatโs probably why I cancel things sometimes. Itโs nothing personal.
indieberlin: No worries, I didnโt take anything personally, Iโm grateful that I got to interview you in the end, well right now. Do you have a cold? Because I hear you sniffling.
Angel Olsen: Yeah, I have a little bit of a cold. I think my bodyโs just like โFuck youโ and I havenโt been drinking. I stopped drinking ever since I got back to kind of clear my body, sleep and, you know, eat like hippie food, maybe go if I can afford itโฆ See an acupuncturist or something. Travelling all the time is wearing me out.
indieberlin: I guess youโve got to do that nowadays.
Angel Olsen: Yeah Iโve got to create some way to be zen in the airport security gate.
indieberlin: I listened to your latest album.
Angel Olsen: How many times did you listen to it?
indieberlin: Too often because I got blocked on the page, it said Iโd reached too many connections.
Angel Olsen: Well that says something. I always ask how many times when Iโm doing this kind of press, because people just listen to it right before they see me, and they havenโt even processed it. And Iโm like: โWell I havenโt processed it either, Iโm still in it, so what are we going to talk about?โ
indieberlin: I was a huge fan of your previous album,ย Burn Your โฆ
Angel Olsen: Burn Your Fire For No Witness
indieberlin: โForgiven/Forgottenโ gave me goosebumps, it was actually one of my alarm songs for two years.
Angel Olsen: ย Itโs funny you say that, because I see so many problematic things on that album now. Iโm happy that I made it. I still feel like it was much more agressive than this one, and for that time in my career Iโm definitely psyched that happened. I wasnโt foreseeing that it was going to be successful, so it was very raw, and I hadnโt been in the music industry quite as much. I think that album will always be kind of part of the collection.
Everyone is going: โI loved her earlier workโ or โI loved David Bowieโs earlier workโ, โI love so and soโs earlier workโ and I think for many people it will always be their thing. To me, when I look back to each work that Iโve done, Iโm critiquing it and finding whatโs missing in it. It’s fun to get a compliment on a song like that, because I know that Iโve performed that song a million times since that recording. I can sing it better in my live performance, so itโs such a weird capsule that Iโm stuck in, but I also appreciate it, itโs a weird thing.
indieberlin: It seemed like a new beginning.
Angel Olsen: ย Yeah, I didnโt know it was at the time.
On side B Iโm just trying to sing more and use my voice as an instrument and to not take myself so seriously
indieberlin: It went from folk to grungy in a few years, and now itโs becoming a mixture of both.
Angel Olsen: ย I would say I feel there are aspects of this album which are definitely R&B-influenced even or, I mean โPopsโ, โThose Were the Daysโ and โHeart Shaped Faceโ are kind of stepping outside of, or maybe theyโre part of โDance Slow Decadesโ or โWindowsโ but branching out of that. If youโre familiar with that record, those two songs are me looking back, the songs I remember as going in that direction, but not quite being there yet.
I do often look at my work without trying to recreate the same formula, see how the work Iโve created now relates to the past. So, for example, โNever Be Mineโ is a song that I relate to โFreeโ or a sixties sort of nostalgic thing. Itโs not meant to be deep, youโre supposed to have fun. And then โPopsโ sounds totally different: itโs a piano, but, you know, maybe because itโs the last song on this record, and โWindowsโ was the last song on the last record, I feel like they relate to each other. Maybe Iโm making them relate to each other in that Iโm using my voice in a different way than the rest of the record.
I do notice those things, โNot Going to Kill Youโ is probably the most agressive of the songs, other than โShut Up Kiss Meโ, and those two are very like โHigh & Wildโ and โForgiven/Forgottenโ. But the thing about Burn Your Fire is that it was agressive but it was still naive. In my head I was naive, so it felt to me like I was presenting to the world my dissertation on Dostoyevski at seventeen, whereas now, I feel like Iโm relaxing into my songs.
Thereโs still a little bit of me caring about getting a message across, and I think there will always be, but on side B Iโm just trying to sing more and use my voice as an instrument and to not take myself so seriously. It doesnโt have to be about the words all the time.
I can sing more, my band can play more and I think everyone always sort of says: โHey, Half Way Home compared to this albumโ or โBurn Your Fire compared to this albumโ, but I really do feel like each one should be different. Theyโre not going to be the same, and if they were the same, my life would be boring, the fans would be bored.
indieberlin: I read you moved to Asheville, NC, back in 2014. Did you move there to record Burn Your Fire ?
Angel Olsen: ย After the recording. We played this Pitchfork event while promoting Half Way Home and it was right after we recorded it. I flew to Texas to mix it with Jon Hency. It was a wonderful experience, just being in Dallas and not really knowing anything about how to get around. It was a bleak but beautiful place to mix a record in. Then I came home, and I sort of got to this point where I felt less and less attached to Chicago. I had visited a bunch of different places across the country, and sort of had been thinking about where I would want to go next.
Asheville was where a few friends had moved to from Chicago. I was finding that relationships I worked with all the time were becoming my closest friends, and I wanted to be around them. So I moved out here and I also really liked the peace of mind that being in a place that wasnโt a big city offered. Thereโs still a scene here, an art scene. People are definitely still human and thatโs very obvious.
You know, itโs a small town. You have be aware of yourself, you have to tip well, you have to be nice to people, donโt gossip. Thereโs a lot of stuff in a small town which you can avoid in a big city. But it forces people to be, or attempt to be, more self-aware of the consequences of their actions.
In Chicago it felt like a biased experience in that, someone might be interviewing me, and later on I might realise: โOh that person who interviewed me, I had a date with their roommate once.โ In the same way, because I was promoting myself, being there for so long, almost a decade, I didnโt need to be there anymore. This is where people saw me grow up, and itโs like playing in your hometown, where itโs a wedding and a funeral all at once, because people come out of the woodwork.
When I come home to my apartment, I donโt talk to anyone about my music. I just chill the fuck out, and itโs awesome
People who didnโt care about what you were doing before come out of the woodwork, and people you love, and havenโt seen in a while, think itโs a good time to catch up. So they come to your show and youโre like: โI donโt really have enough time to talk to you, but Iโd love to see youโ. There is this kind of pressure, and it was a pressurised situation being there.
Someone might be talking to me about something, and at the end of the conversation, they might go: โIโm a huge fan by the wayโ, and even if I appreciated that, Iโd be sort of weirded out. I just want to have a normal conversation. I donโt want to be a person who is that to you, I just want to be a person to you. Itโs not even a thing that happened often enough but it was just becoming, perhaps because of my self promotion in Chicago, a kind of alienating factor in my lifestyle.
I really love Asheville, itโs a soft landing pad, especially because Iโm travelling so much, always talking to people, trying to perform, make sure Iโm saying the right thing. I always have to be on, and when I come home to my apartment, I donโt talk to anyone about my music. I just chill the fuck out, and itโs awesome, itโs the best thing ever.
indieberlin: I tried finding some information about Asheville. Robert Moog (inventor of the Moog synthesiser) apparently lived there towards the end of his life, and a rabid beaver attack has been making the news lately. What else is it famous for?
Angel Olsen: ย Itโs like we have all these – itโs called Beer City – itโs all of these brewing companies are opening up because we have very good water, and a good source for it. Itโs a rain forest, even though itโs not like Seattle or the North-West. But we do have some of the oldest mountains surrounding us. So thereโs this diversity in tree life, plants and animal life, seeds and fruit and shit you canโt find all the time. Itโs a beautiful place for those reasons but also, youโve got the train hopper types, the people who belong in Portlandia. Itโs a weird sort of a Berkeley of the South Iโd say, with a mix of hicks in there sometimes.
People ask me about banjo players when they talk about Asheville because of the history of Appalachian culture, and Iโm always like: โJust because I live here doesnโt mean everyone here plays a banjo”. Itโs the same way if people hear from Alaska asking whether itโs cold. They just assume youโre always living near a glacier. But in Asheville, itโs definitely the living situation, the gentrification which is just as bad as in Chicago. There isnโt housing for people, and Airbnb keeps taking housing away.
People are retiring here from NY or Florida, buying up the houses and using them as Airbnb so no-one can live there. And though itโs bringing an income for the rest of the city, youโve got to have that income for people to live here, for the young people to work at the cafรฉs who serve the people buying those properties. It is a mixed up kind of place, itโs still struggling in a lot of ways. I feel like itโs still has yet to be conquered, itโs not totally eaten up yet.
I guess living here, I can see all the struggles I had in Chicago, the living situations and the weird way it works. Young people who are artists move to a poor part of town, and they make it look hip. They get older, or they attract people who are older, and want to have an affordable place to start a family, and then those people move in. The poor families are bought out of their businesses and their houses, and gentrification is plainly there.
And a lot of the time itโs because of art, because of people who make an area attractive, and those people are usually artists. It is weird to think about that. I do feel I was a part of that in Chicago, itโs a consequence of something that I donโt like because I was struggling at some point too, and I didnโt mean to be part of that struggle. We donโt mean to be a part of that, but it happens everywhere.
Startups can take advantage of the loopholes. Most of the time theyโre good people, but they donโt see the consequences of what theyโre doing. As part of a band, I canโt deny that weโve stayed in Airbnbs and that we donโt find them helpful, but it is fucked up that in my own town itโs a problem. Even in a small town, where itโs peaceful and there are less people around, the number one reason we canโt afford housing is because people are buying the properties and using them for Airbnb.
There should be some sort of restriction. Iโm not trying to be extreme and say it shouldnโt exist, but there should be some restriction on it to keep people from taking advantage of that situation and causing that problem.
indieberlin: Did you get the opportunity to visit Berlin?
Iโm curious to learn about Berlin because of the people Iโve met
Angel Olsen: ย I did, I still havenโt been in Berlin for more than two days at a time, so itโs really hard to grasp what the cityโs all about. But I did feel that, because of the bikes, I could relate it to Chicago. There are a lot of Americans living there. Itโs very multicultural kind of place, but the interviews Iโve had have been the most interesting there. I donโt know if that has something to do with the place or Germany in general, or whatever, but the insightfulness and the kinds of unique directions of even conversations Iโve had about my album are reflective in that. Iโm curious to learn about Berlin because of the people Iโve met and most of the people unfortunately have always been through work or talking about myself. But it would be cool to explore the city and spend a week there and kind of just see whatโs going on.
indieberlin: One last question and Iโll let you go. You directed the video to โShut Up Kiss Meโ, with a bunch of clichรฉs of the American way of life (diner, hot dogs, roller skates). Is that a critique or is it something you grew up with and decided to put in your video?
Angel Olsen: ย Honestly, there was no such thing, though I make sentimental music, visually, I was just trying to have fun. David Bowie had just died, and I went to a celebration at a roller skating rink before making the album, and everyone dressed up as Bowie. There was a contest there and they were playing all of his albums. It was so packed, people were hardly roller skating, they were just walking with skates on. And people were crying, others were laughing and I just felt like: “what a cool way to go out”.
I was inspired by that and went home, found a wig and I decided to glam myself up to kind of nod to Bowie. Presenting yourself under a ridiculous way, and reflecting a ridiculous thing. Even with a sentiment, a good one.
Angel Olsen is live in Columbia Theater on 25.10.16. Be sure not to miss it!
Interview by Patrick Bird