Review: Angel Olsen comes out with clear-eyed country music

POP/ROCK

Angel Olsen, "Big Time" (Jagjaguwar)

On her superb sixth album, Olsen plunges right into the depths.

"I had a dream last night/We were having a fight/It lasted 25 years," begins "Dream Thing," an atmospheric ballad that imagines an encounter with an ex. Later, on the plaintive "This Is How It Works," she's more direct: "I know you can't talk long, but I'm barely hanging on."

"Big Time" was recorded last year, at the end of a particularly tumultuous time in Olsen's life: Shortly after she came out to her parents — she had her first romantic relationship and subsequent breakup with a woman during the pandemic — her father, then her mother both died of separate illnesses within two months of each other. Though these events are not explicitly referenced here, "Big Time" is charged with a continuous current of weighty, transformative and bracingly clear-eyed emotion.

On the first album on which Olsen is singing consciously about queer desire, she turns to a notably tradition-bound genre: country. On torch songs like the stark "Ghost On" and the stunning "Right Now," she finds a perfect balance between honoring the sounds of country's past and updating them in her own image.

While the first half of the record doesn't scrimp on heartbreaking moments ("All the Flowers" is a highlight), "Big Time" crescendos in its second half. "Right Now" is a country lament that, in its final minute, transforms into a dissonant, flinty-eyed confrontation: "I need you to look at me and listen," Olsen intones, "I am the past coming back to haunt you."

Then there's "Go Home." "I wanna go home," Olsen wails, knowing it's too late to "Go back to small things." Her vocal performance is wrenching, but by the song's end she has arrived at a kind of peace: "Forget the old dream," she sings, "I got a new thing."

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