The kind of music I write could be uncomfortable to listen to, in an interesting way. It’s almost like reading a passage and you’re like, “Whoa, that’s intense. I need to take a break from it.” Maybe it’s audacious to say that my music does that to people, but I often feel like I need to take a break from it myself. I think that’s why I enjoyed playing with Will [Oldham] so much, because it was a chance to sing somebody else’s music, to hear how somebody else approaches songs, to actually listen to something.
Angel Olsen, 25, is a singer-songwriter who has collaborated with Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) and Emmett Kelly (Cairo Gang). Earlier this year Bathetic Records released her sophomore album, Half Way Home, to glowing reviews. —Leor Galil
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A lot of [my most recent] album was written a long time ago, and I was just holding onto the songs ’cause I knew they needed to be recorded differently; they needed special attention. I wasn’t prepared to work with people yet. I was trying to get a band together. I had no idea how to communicate how I wanted drums on a song. It was just this totally alien process. But in the end, a lot of the songs, even the newer songs, all relate to finding a place to be that is a home, even if it’s within yourself, and that’s why I decided to name it Half Way Home. Also it’s a line in one of the songs, and it was this reccurring idea that I didn’t even realize that I was writing about. I was like, “Oh shit, I’ve really been thinking about this for a lot of years.”
I started playing music when I was really small. I was adopted at an early age, like three. My biological uncle gave me a keyboard as the adoption process was happening. And my mother, my adoptive mother, had a piano and I would play piano a lot and write songs. By the time I was 12 I was making mixtapes of myself singing Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. I would record the song on the radio and then put my own vocals underneath it and it was this little kid voice and I just kept thinking, “I can’t wait until I’m a woman, so I can have a real voice.” I still think that sometimes.
With Strange Cacti, I was really attached to the songs and I had to emotionally prepare for giving them up, allowing other people to add different beats or just to breathe something else into them. I had tried to record those tracks with subtle arrangements with other groups of people like three times, and each time I just felt too crowded. So I made this kind of half-assed recording in my kitchen and it ended up doing well, despite the fact it was drenched in reverb. I guess at the time it was superhip to have tons of reverb on everything, but I was really embarrassed when it came out. I was psyched that people liked it but I almost cringe thinking about it.
It makes me happy that people in my life enjoy what I’m doing, in a real way. It’s definitely more difficult to play in Chicago despite the fact that I’m surrounded by my friends—because they also know that I’m a human being full of shit sometimes and they’ve seen me at my worst. People are psyched about this album and are really gracious about it, but I’m also like, “Shit, now I have to write something that’s better than that.” And that’s not always easy, because you’re happy and can’t write as articulately about how happy you are because you don’t want the happiness to be figured out.
