Gold Dust Woman: Angel Olsen interview

“I’m sorry if I’m waterfall-talking right now, but a lot of times journalists don’t even fucking ask me about the music. They’re just like; “So, the wig? What’s going on with that?”

Angel Olsen’s relationship with the press has been a bit of an arm’s-length affair in the past. Part of that had to do with the enigmatic manner in which she presented herself and her music, and the media’s unwillingness to try to dig beyond it; the scratchy, lo-fi videos and hand-drawn artwork that accompanied her 2014 breakthrough, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, were enough to see her pigeonholed as a tortured singer-songwriter. During one excruciating radio interview in Chicago, the American musician was asked to expand upon why she sounded like “a girl at the bottom of a dark well.” Reviews of the record were unanimous in their positivity but – whether through laziness or false preconceptions – many seemed to fundamentally misunderstand Olsen. 

Either way, My Woman, her fourth LP, is going to confound expectations. Stylistically it runs the gamut from synthpop (Intern) to smoky piano balladry (Pops) to out-and-out sixties girl-group fare (Never Be Mine). She swings from a runaway favourite for the year’s most infectious pop song, Shut Up Kiss Me, to the murky atmospherics of slow burners Sister and Woman, both of which push close to eight minutes in length. The scope of her musical ambition on My Woman is thrillingly broad, and whatever happens, nobody is going to be able to compartmentalise Olsen after this.

The origins of My Woman

We've spoken previously, shortly before Burn Your Fire was released. Then, she had her guard up; long, reticent pauses between answers punctuated the conversation, with her reluctance to give too much away obvious. This time around, it’s difficult to get a word in edgeways; Olsen routinely gets carried away with her own excitement about this set of songs. After never considering writing on the road, she explains that much of My Woman came together during a pair of tours that served as a holiday as much as anything else.

“Last summer, we went to Europe for a tour that I planned for no other reason than just to get away and hang out with my band,” she says. “It was really laid back; we’d spend three days in Spain, but just play one show in San Sebastian, and spend the rest of the time chilling out. Then we’d drive to Porto, have dinner, and then carry on to Lisbon to play a show together.” 

The band's unhurried, refreshing schedule captured Olsen's imagination, resulting in a spontaneous record that still sounds meticulously constructed. "It was a really romantic way to tour," she enthuses. "Going to Istanbul and checking out places like the Grand Bazaar, then taking a ferry to Athens where we could spend all day swimming in the ocean and play that night at a venue that was like a cross between an aquarium and an 80s punk rock club. I had so much energy when I got home that I wrote six of the songs really quickly, and I already had a couple down from when we were in Australia earlier in the year, just things I’d come up with sitting by the pool in Byron Bay.”

After the album came together in the most unexpected of places, Olsen and her band decamped from Asheville to Los Angeles to record at Vox Studios – where the majority of My Woman was cut straight to tape. “My friend Justin Raisen co-produced the record with me,” she explains, “and he was the last person I thought I’d work with. He knows that, too. He’s this very LA guy, with crazy blonde hair, Adidas tracksuits and chains, and he’s sort of best known for writing songs with people like Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira. We’d emailed a lot before we met up, and I was a little worried: is this guy going to be on my level? But he has this hyperactive sense of excitement about him that was really, really refreshing. It’s so easy to become jaded about the music industry, and here’s this guy who’s worked with these huge artists and yet still loves making weird demos that might never see the light of day.”

Raisen’s relentless enthusiasm balanced out the natural approach of Olsen’s band, previously her only sounding board for demos and ideas. “I remember being nervous introducing the guys in my crew to Justin, because they’re all critics; they’re the sort of people who can sit around for hours on end arguing about Drake versus Kanye like it’s a philosophical debate,” she laughs. “And Justin’s a guy who was taking my demos home and dancing with his wife to them, a guy who'd sit in the listening room and shout things like, 'Scorsese’s going to put your songs in his next movie, and you’ll be all, “show me the money, Scorsese!”’ But I needed that. I didn’t want a producer who was going to pick apart the songs and look for the negatives.”

Olsen's lyrical rebirth

As well as documenting an unorthodox recording process, My Woman is a rebirth for Olsen in terms of lyrical thematics, too. She's tied up the album with a title that suggests a new straightforwardness, and it has already been widely interpreted as a feminist statement. There are points on the record in which she delves into direct questions of gender; “I dare you to understand what makes me a woman,” she croons with operatic intensity on Woman, while Heart Shaped Face explores emotional manipulation of women by men. The album’s threads, though, are ultimately much more diffuse.

“I didn’t think woman should have to be a dirty word,” Olsen explains, “but the title was just something that made me laugh. I was thinking about it in terms of being in a relationship with a guy, and him joking around and calling me ‘[his] woman.’ It’s kind of degrading, but also flirtatious. I didn’t hate it, and it made me sort of embrace that I like having traditional gender roles, even if I don’t always want to be stuck in them. I don’t object to the idea of being a mother, or somebody’s wife, but I also don’t want to make that point with the record, necessarily. The title’s just an access point. If people want to see it as me reclaiming that phrase, that’s fine. It was just supposed to be a conversation piece.”

It is abundantly clear that Angel Olsen is at peace, now, with the possibilites of people interpreting her music whichever way they hear it. “I sent the record to a friend of mine, but without the lyric sheet, and they wrote me back saying, 'Oh, I really loved this line.' And they had the line wrong; they got a couple of words wrong that totally changed the context of it. I couldn't bring myself to correct them, because I wanted them to be able to manipulate it. I guess it’s part of the beartrap I created for myself being an emotional, serious artist, but now I can’t even joke around with people! Whenever I do, they’re like, ‘Yeah, but what does that mean?’ Like everything I say has to have some deep subtext. So, you know, if you want to take My Woman as being overtly feminist, that’s fine. I just thought it sounded badass.”

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My Woman is available 2 Sep via Jagjaguwar. Angel Olsen plays Manchester’s Club Academy on 14 Oct and Glasgow’s SWG3 on 15 Oct