Angel Olsen’s five best deep-cuts
Since her breakout, Angel Olsen has been the queen of the cultish indie scene. With her uniquely beautiful voice and stunning timbre, she never needed much else to have hoards captivated by her music. But across six studio albums, her ever-evolving style has proved her to be a deeply inspired artist.
Olsen has always actively defied expectations. With each new release, she seems to put effort into keeping people on their toes and refusing to slip easily into simple labels. Instead, her releases have always been a cross-genre melting pot of influences and sounds, giving her sharp lyricism a different nest and landscape with each era.
But with her twist and turn, she’s remained true to herself. The spotlight of her work has always shone uncompromisingly on her voice and words. The stories Olsen tells with her broad register and warbling delivery have kept fans coming back time and time again, continuing to explore the world of her creativity alongside her.
As with every artist, certain songs rise to the top as the best-known and most beloved. But for someone like Olsen, who has such an expansive catalogue, it’s easy for greatness to slip between the cracks. So whether you’re looking to dive deeper and get to know the artist better, or if you’re a long-time fan keen to reunite with some cuts that have been forgotten along the way, here are five of the most underrated deep cuts.
Angel Olsen’s five best deep-cuts:
‘You Are Song’
Following her debut EP, Strange Cacti, which caught the world’s attention thanks to Olsen’s unique vocal timbre and storytelling, Half Way Home was her first LP. Released in 2012, it was her full-scale launch into the world. Looking back now, it feels like an album of fragments or seeds that grew into the artist Olsen is today, with early strains of folk and indie in the mix. It also feels like an incredible tender release as she stepped bravely into the music world with her heart on her sleeve.
‘You Are Song’ feels especially delicate. Built of nothing beyond Olsen’s stunning vocals and a guitar, it’s so simple but needs nothing more. While all too quickly usurped by her next releases, this first offering contains so much gold as listeners hear the artist in her promising infancy.
‘Forgiven/Forgotten’
When it came to releasing her second album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, Olsen launched into a new era with a brand new sound. From the tender indie folk of her first releases, ‘Forgiven/Forgotten’ was louder, begging and burning. More boisterous than anything that had been heard from the artist before, it was the first sign that she would always be one step ahead.
Moving into the psych-pop world with distortions and big drums was the first major leap into the direction that she’s continued to wander down ever since. As a pleading track about moving on and letting go, the instrumentals and lyrics are beautifully married for an immersive experience that makes the emotions swell to new heights.
‘Lark’
Some songs come in a moment, others take their time. When it came to ‘Lark’, the track took Olsen four years to get right. It started off the back of an argument about trust and support. Then, as her own relationship to those feelings evolved with age and experience, the song morphed, too.
The sound evolved, too. ‘Lark’ is Olsen at her undeniable artistic best. It’s orchestral and glorious yet experimental, as every genre strain that Olsen had played with since the start of her career finds a new and elevated form here. While not quite a deep cut, it still feels like no amount of attention the song gets will ever be enough to satiate the praise it deserves.
‘Intern’
When it came to making her third album, Olsen refused to be categorised. She didn’t want to be folk, she didn’t want to be indie, she didn’t even want to be an easily described amalgamation of them all. Instead, she just wanted to be herself, so she decided to lead with the one thing that made her her: her voice.
She said of My Woman that she was interested mostly in using the “plurality of voices” and “wanted to use [her] vocal more and sing in the styles that [she] liked.” The album’s opening track ‘Intern’ is a perfect example of that as the song swells and builds tension but by using little more than her raw vocals. Returning to the simplicity of her debut, where the spotlight shone brightly on her unique voice, it’s proof that Olsen has never needed anything beyond her raw talent to be truly captivating.
‘California’
With so much greatness in her archive, Olsen unleashed a selection of unheard B-sides, demos and covers on Phases, a 2017 compilation album. Alongside the evolution heard on her albums, this revisiting of unreleased tracks from throughout her career was a beautiful display of her development as an artist and the breadth of her talent.
‘California’ is a standout. Criminally kept from any official album tracklist, it’s a masterpiece of vocal acrobatics and play. Wandering the length of her register, there are moments that feel totally timeless as she waltzes into warbling country territory.
