Big Time

Description

A recent bereavement, just like a new love, has the gift of sharpening our vision and allowing us to see more clearly. However temporary these states may be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overwhelm even the strongest among us. There are rare and fertile moments when both coexist, when grief and limerence intensify, complicate, and mingle; the songs that make up Angel Olsen’s Big Time were forged in such a moment. Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism are tempered by a deep sense of loss. During Angel Olsen’s process of coming to terms with her homosexuality and confronting the traumas that had prevented her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, an obstacle she had been avoiding for some time. Finally, at the age of 34, she was free to be herself. Three days later, her father died, followed shortly after by her mother. The fragments of this grief - the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully and sincerely by her parents - are scattered throughout the album. Three weeks after her mother’s funeral, Angel Olsen was in the studio, recording this new album filled with wisdom and tenderness. Loss has long been a central theme in Angel Olsen’s songs, but few artists can write elegies with such energy. If this overflowing dynamism has become inseparable from her work, this album proves that Angel Olsen now writes with a more grounded clarity. She works with an elastic mastery of her voice, both sonically and artistically. These are not just songs about grief and the transformations it causes, but about the search for freedom and joy despite deprivation and lack.