On her newest album, "Burn Your Fire for No Witness", ANGEL OLSEN sings with full-throated exultation, admonition, and bold, expressive melody.

 

With the help of producer John Congleton, her music now crackles with a churning, rumbling low end and a brighter energy.

 

ANGEL OLSEN began singing as a young girl in St. Louis. Her self-released debut EP, "Strange Cacti", belied both that early period of discovery and her Midwestern roots.

 

OLSEN then went further on "Half Way Home", her first full-length album (released on Bathetic Records), which mined essential themes while showcasing a more developed voice.

 

OLSEN dared to be more personal. After extensive touring, ANGEL OLSEN eventually settled for a time in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood, where she created "a collection of songs grown in a year of heartbreak, travel, and transformation," that would become "Burn Your Fire For No Witness".

 

Many of them remain essentially unchanged from their bare beginnings. In leaving them so intact, a more self-assured OLSEN allows us to be in the room with her at the very genesis of these songs.

 

Our reward for entering this room is many a head-turning moment and the powerful, unsettling recognition of ourselves in the weave of her songs.