Angel Olsen is bringing her biggest band to Australia with new album My Woman released

ANGEL Olsen is her own woman, ready to bring her biggest band to Australia to play for themselves first and for crowds second.

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ANGEL Olsen is a good talker.

Olsen answers questions in long florid brushstrokes, pauses frequently and asks “Do you know what I mean? Because I really want you to know what I mean.”

It’s a very sweet, endearing mannerism and the charmingly goofy 29-year-old Missouri-raised, now Northern Carolina-based artist is an interviewer’s dream — she can go for compliment for compliment with the best.

After I tell her I’ve spun her stunning new record, My Woman, 20 times in a row she shoots back: “Well I made the record just for you (pause). This one is for Mikey.”

Pauses are important to Olsen in a career, intriguingly, where she’s barely stopped to take a breath.

01/02/15, Sydney, N.S.W. Australia © Andrew Murray Angel Olsen preforming at the Laneway Festival, in Rozelle

Olsen has burned brighter and brighter as a band leader of feisty rock outfits with punchy, twangy leanings. She has released constant work since 2009 and now she uses pauses in meaningful, expectation-shattering ways. She debuted with Summer Bummer Get Laid Get Wasted, and had a nice thing on the side playing in Bonnie Prince Billy’s band in 2011-2012. Burn Your Fire For No Witness in 2014 saw her star rise like sky-licking flames and she played the Laneway Festival tour earlier this year, scorching the stage with an edgy, attacking presence. Now she brings us My Woman, recorded completely live in 17 days (for the first time) with a crack new band (for the first time) co-produced by Justin Raisen (that’s right, for the first time. Raisen has worked with Charli XCX) but Olsen says she worked with him because “he was like a comedian, we talked a lot about existentialism too.

Her pause and effect strategy has come to the fore on the International Single of The Year™ (as voted by me) Shut Up Kiss Me, a stop-start, what-the-hell-will-happen-next second single from My Woman after the spicy, self-referential Intern. Chosen by Pitchfork as Best New Music, Shut Up Kiss Me knocks you over every time you hear it. Once that song sidles up to you, well, you have to stay in the cafe or remain in your car or loiter awkwardly out the front of your friend’s house until it’s over because you can’t bear to miss all of the drama.

Presenting: "Sister"https://t.co/WPj10ZmAWQ pic.twitter.com/zmkR7wgNXx

— Angel Olsen (@AngelOlsen) August 24, 2016

“For me, when we were mixing it I was wondering whether it was gonna make the record. It’s too long, it goes (speaks fast) up and down and up and down and a guitar solo happens ... TWICE,” she says, self-deprecating. “And when you’re mixing a live record and you f!@k up there’s only so much you can hide. I was on a journey and in Portugal learning Portuguese and I had a cold at the time and I was mixing via Skype. I needed perspective. People were like ‘What part do you want to make louder on this song?’ I was so frustrated.

“Then after we mixed it nine times I listened to the finished Shut Up Kiss Me in my car and I was crying by the end of it, I wanted to keep driving as you said. I stayed in the car until it finished.

“What I realise about Shut Up Kiss Me is there’s this moment I know when I was in that room and my whole band were all in different rooms and I was isolated and we all had our separate mixes that we were following and after that second guitar solo that we all paused ... and in that pause there’s a moment that is really special because that’s the sound of the whole record to me. We all stopped at the same time and then a second later we’re all back together. You only get that from a live band who understand each other’s language.

“My Woman is like a photograph of me and my band hanging out together it’s not made for your listening pleasure. Now what I’ve found after talking a lot about the record to journalists, and sure it’s a one-sided conversation but it’s a therapeutic thing because I don’t really know what I was feeling and what I was actually making. I’m still processing it.”

As for the title My Woman, “it’s not necessarily a feminist work but I can carry the consequence of calling it that.” She can handle herself.

HEAR: My Woman (Inertia) out tomorrow.

SEE: Corner Hotel Richmond, Nov. 28, $5, cornerhotel.com; Lismore City Hall, Dec. 1, $45; Brightside, 27 Warner St, Fortitude Valley; Dec. 2; Fairgrounds Festival, Berry Showgrounds, Dec. 2-3, $150, fairgrounds.com.au; Sydney Opera House Studio, Dec. 5, $59+bf, sydneyoperahouse.com; Meredith Music Festival, Dec. 9-11, sold out, mmf.com.au

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