Angelm Olsen

Originally conceived as a double album, all mirrors and whole new mess were distinct parts of a larger whole, Twin stars that each expressed something bigger and bolder than Angel Olsen had ever made. Released in 2019, All mirrors is massive in scope and sound, tracing Olsen's ascent into the unknown, to a place of true self-acceptance, no matter how dark, or difficult, or seemingly lonely. All mirrors is colossal, moving, dramatic in an old Hollywood manner. Recorded before all mirrors but released after, whole new mess is the Bones and s of the songs that would rewrite Olsen's story. This is Angel Olsen in her classic style: stark solo performances, echoes and open spaces, her voice both whispered and enormous. All mirrors and whole new mess presented the two glorious extremes of an artist who, in these songs, became new by embracing herself entirely. Now, with songs of the lark… and other far memories, these Twin stars become a constellation with the full extent of the songs' Iterations: all the alternate takes, b-sides, remixes and reimaginings are here, together. Alongside, a 40-page book collection tells a similar story, not just through outtakes and unseen photos but through the smaller, evocative details: handwritten lyrics, a favorite Necklace, a beaded Chandelier. As if it could be more plainly stated (there's nothing more), Angel adds one cover here: a loving, assertive rendition of Roxy music's "more than this." it is a definitive collection, not just of these songs but of their revelations and their writer, from their simplest origins to their mightiest realization.

The time had come, Angel Olsen realized in the fading summer of 2018, to take her new songs out of the house. Olsen’s 2016 marvel, My Woman, had been a career breakthrough, but it catalyzed a period of personal tumult, too: a painful breakup, an uneasy recovery, an inadequate reckoning. At home in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Olsen penned songs that finally grappled with these troubles, particularly love - how forever is too much to promise, how relationships can lock us into static versions of ourselves, how you can go through hell just to make someone else happy.

Last year’s Big Time brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realisation that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it, and Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen’s words, “in search of something else.”