100 Greatest Songs of the 2010’s #29 Angel Olsen – Sister

arcticreviewsblog

Released : 2016

Up until this point Angel Olsen’s music had been interesting, easy to sample but also to remain detached from. It sounded great and came with all the right pedigree – an early career ensconced in lo-fi and that featured touring with Will Oldham – but on Sister the singer for the first time demanded our attention.

An epic song which begins in the dreamy heat of a Laurel Canyon summer afternoon, Olsen powers through changes in tone and mood, her voice cracked, desolate, electrically charged. There’s no chorus here, the closest being the most repeated “All my life I thought I’d change”, but the quiet-loud-quiet patina, including a chaotic guitar breakdown, is a joy, a journey on a long dirt road with no map.

Beyond this, there was a writer to become obsessed with.

Published by arcticreviewsblog

Hi, my name is Andy & I live in Leeds, in northern England. I've been writing about music for more than ten years. My work outside of this blog is featured on Live4ever and Contact Music.