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Angel Olsen is a Rock Star and Everyone Should Know Her Name

If you’re not familiar with Angel Olsen, it’s high time you got to know her. The St. Louis folk rocker has been one of my favorite musicians—bar genre, bar era, bar anything—since she released Burn Your Fire for No Witness in 2014. The album is incredible, an emotive folk-rock masterpiece steeped in a lo-fi brew, and I felt it to be the best release of the year.

If that’s not testament enough, I then went and saw her three times in 2015 (in three different states), with each performance outshining the last. Onstage the musician oscillates between a quirky banter and her subtly distinct croon, like Sharon van Etten meets Roy Orbison meets the unbound stylings of Grace Slick. It’s dream inducing, and I was always left feeling like I’d stumbled into one of Dale Cooper’s Twin Peaks reveries for an hour (which is a great feeling, by the way).

Earlier this month, Olsen announced that My Woman, the follow-up to No Witness, would arrive on September 2 via Jagjaguwar. With the announcement, she also released a trailer, a full-on list of tour dates, and a statement declaring that she had “recalibrated her writing/recording approach and methods to enter a new music-making phase.”

Today Olsen shared the album’s newest single, “Shut Up Kiss Me,” and its accompanying video. True to her word, the new track does suggest a slightly different Angel—though nothing so staggering that it might be considered a departure, and nothing that in any way diminishes the quality of her work. In trading some of her enigmatic brood, for instance, the singer-songwriter gains an immediacy that makes this track sing. And, of course, she still howls and murmurs in that salient tenor, telling her love to “shut up kiss me hold me tight.”

In the video, Olsen dons the same sparkling wig she wore in the album trailer and appears in a bunch of ‘70s-tinged locales (roller disco, diner, arcade). Like her music, the clip inhabits that same nostalgic realm between past and present that Twin Peaks does so well. It’s the kind of dreamy you can dance to (aka the best kind) and it’s another great addition to the Angel Olsen canon. Check out the track and go see her when she swings through town.

Angel Olsen Tour:

Fri. Sep. 9 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West *
Sat. Sep. 10 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In *
Sun. Sep. 11 – Cincinnati, OH @ Woodward Theater *
Mon. Sep. 12 – Millvale, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre *
Wed. Sep. 14 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
Thu. Sep. 15 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club *
Fri. Sep. 16 – Hudson, NY @ Basilica Hudson
Sat. Sep. 17 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall *
Sun. Sep. 18 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw *
Tue. Sep. 20 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair *
Wed. Sep. 21 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair &
Thu. Sep. 22 – South Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Ballroom &
Fri. Sep. 23 – Montreal, QC @ Rialto Theatre &
Sat. Sep. 24 – Toronto, ON @ Virgin Mobile Mod Club &
Mon. Sep. 26 – Ferndale, MI @ The Loving Touch &
Tue. Sep. 27 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall &
Fri. Sep. 30 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway &
Sat. Oct. 1 – Asheville, NC @ Grey Eagle &
Thu. Oct. 13 – Brighton, UK @ Concord 2 #
Fri. Oct. 14 – Manchester, UK @ Club Academy #
Sat. Oct. 15 – Glasgow, UK @ SWG3 Studio Warehouse #
Sun. Oct. 16 – Bristol, UK @ The Marble Factory #
Mon. Oct. 17 – London, UK @ KOKO #
Wed. Oct. 19 – Hamburg, DE @ Kampnagel #
Thu. Oct. 20 – Copenhagen, DK @ Koncerthuset, Studie 2 #
Fri. Oct. 21 – Oslo, NO @ John Dee #
Sat. Oct. 22 – Stockholm, SE @ Debaser Strand #
Sun. Oct. 23 – Goeteborg, SE @ Pustervik #
Tue. Oct. 25 – Berlin, DE @ Columbia Theater #
Wed. Oct. 26 – Munich, DE @ Ampere #
Thu. Oct. 27 – Zuerich, CH @ Bogen F #
Fri. Oct. 28 – Koeln, DE @ Stadtgarten #
Sat. Oct. 29 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique #
Fri. Nov. 4 – Paris, FR @ La Gaîté Lyrique #
Sat. Nov. 5 – Den Haag, NL @ Crossing Border Festival
Sun. Nov. 6 – Amsterdam, NL @ Tolhuistuin #

* = with Alex Cameron
& = with Rodrigo Amarante
# = with Little Wings

 

Image: JagJaguwar

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