It takes to the heart, from the first to the last painful and liberating note: the upheavals in the life of Angel Olsen are heard, resonate. She already had that drawling tone, somewhere between drama and disdain—Martha Wainwright in Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, let’s say—but everything here is heightened. Her pandemic was more than turbulent, a personal chain of cause and effect: she lost both parents, one after the other, shortly after introducing her partner to them and coming out as queer. Measure. Between mourning and the aftermath, she sings at the same time her brutal disarray and the sweetness of a great calm finally found: country waltz (All the Good Timeswith great support from pedal steel), tragic ballad evoking the Shangri-Las in blacker (Right Now). It’s the album of the journey from guilt to acceptance. ” I can’t say that I’m sorry when I don’t feel so wrong anymore “, she notes. That does not prevent the pain in All the Flowers, the most poignant and beautiful song on the record. On the contrary: this is where it happens.
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