Anne Malin - Summer Angel - VINYL LP

The descent into darkness is a trope we find time again across history, literature and film. But there's also an abyss above. There's a winding white staircase that goes ever upward into the great unknown - each step, each turn, requiring a greater boldness and confidence than the one before. This is the journey on which we find Angel Olsen. Olsen's artistic beginnings as a collaborator shifted seamlessly to her magnificent, cryptic-to-cosmic solo work, and then she formed bands to play her songs, and her stages and audiences grew exponentially. But all along, Olsen was more concerned with a different kind of path, and on her vulnerable, Big Mood new album, All Mirrors, we can see her taking an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations. In the process of making this album, she found a new sound and voice, a blast of fury mixed with hard won self-acceptance. InchIn every way -from the making of it, to the words, to how I feel moving forward- this record is about owning up to your darkest side,Inch Olsen said. InchFinding the capacity for new love and trusting change, even when you feel like a stranger. This is a record about facing yourself and learning to forgive what you see. It is about losing empathy, trust, love for destructive people. It is about walking away from the noise and realizing that you can have solitude and peace in your own thoughts, that your thoughts alone can be just as valid, if not more.Inch Album Tracks 1. Lark 2. All Mirrors 3. Too Easy 4. New Love Cassette 5. Spring 6. What It Is 7. Impasse 8. Tonight 9. Summer 10. Endgame 11. Chance

Vinyl LP pressing. Phases is a collection of Olsen's work culled from the past several years, including a number of never-before-released tracks. InchFly On Your Wall,Inch previously contributed to the Bandcamp-only, anti-Trump fundraiser Our First 100 Days, opens Phases, before seamlessly slipping into InchSpecial,Inch a brand new song from the My Woman recording sessions. Both InchHow Many DisastersInch and InchSansInch are first-time listens home-recorded demos that have never been released, leaning heavily on Olsen's arresting croon and lonesome guitar. Album Tracks 1. Fly on Your Wall 2. Special 3. Only You 4. All Right Now 5. Sans 6. Sweet Dreams 7. California 8. Tougher Than the Rest 9. For You 10. How Many Disasters 11. May As Well 12. Endless Road

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 break through, 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. These heartsore explorations shape WholeNew Mess, Olsen's first solo album since her 2012 debut and an emotional portrait so intimate and vulnerable you can hear her find meaning in these crises in real-time. At least nine of the eleven songs on Whole New Mess should sound familiar to anyone who has heard All Mirrors, Olsen's grand 2019 masterpiece that earned high honors on prestigious year-end lists and glossy spreads in stylish magazines. InchLark,Inch InchSummer,InchChanceInch-they are all here, at least in some skeletal form and with slightly different titles. But these are not the demos for All Mirrors. Instead, Whole New Mess is it's own record with it's own immovable mood, with Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the Pacific Northwest. If the lavish orchestral arrangements and cinematic scope of AllMirrors are the sound of Olsen preparing her scars for the wider world to see, Whole NewMess is the sound of her first figuring out their shape, making sense for herself of these injuries. Considered alongside All Mirrors, Whole New Mess is a poignant and pointed reminder that songs are more than mere collections of words, chords, and even melodies. They are webs of moods and moments and ideas, qual