Angel Olsen owns it

She pressed her nose to the window as a lo-fi folk princess and subsequently became "indie rock's new dark star", but more than anything, Angel Olsen wants to be herself. Her new album MY WOMAN is a powerful plea for self-preservation. "Some people are even disappointed that I'm not gay."

You look so pensive," Angel Olsen tells me after our conversation. I am exhausted by the sweltering summer day in Brussels on which we met, I say, but mostly I am also overwhelmed by her flood of words, high on the roof of the Ancienne Belgique. "Well, I do it the Kanye way," she smiles. "I don't think I agree with everything he says, but I like the idea of giving a lot of information. He ignores the question and changes the subject to something he wants to talk about." [Laughs]

Okay, what does the 29-year-old singer want to talk about? About Asheville, North Carolina, the quiet, remote town where she moved recently? About what it was like to get into the good graces of Bonnie "Prince" Billy? About her adoptive mother and father, who are now 73 and 85? About her biological uncle, who gave her a keyboard when she was a toddler? About how she wanted to become a popstar and when she was twelve, made mixtapes of songs by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston to which she would then add her own girly vocals? About how she couldn't wait to be a real woman with a real voice?

"I am that woman now," she laughs. "Let's talk about that." Of course. Many of Olsen's new songs are about the "complicated mess of being a woman." It is no coincidence that her album is entitled MY WOMAN – in capitals, that's right, as if to make a bold statement. "I don't know if I wanted to make a statement," Olsen sighs. "It was just by default. What do you think about when you read those words? You think about some sort of ownership over something or about a person in your life that you feel very connected with? Or maybe you think it's a degrading term... Some people are even disappointed that I'm not gay. To me it's more about me standing up for myself and what I believe in and not hiding behind something."

"The idea of calling someone 'my woman' is both old-fashioned and endearing," she continues. "I'm doing these things for you and I'm suffering through them, while you can live your life, not knowing that that was suffering and love. But we have this connection anyway, because I love you so much that I forgive you and we are together in this moment."



Because she put that "woman" in the title and sings about women, Angel Olsen is suddenly considered a feminist. "I don't like the connotation that the word feminism brings up, because it's a trend now," she says. "It is cool that it's trendy, but it's annoying in that it's just a trend when it is actually very real. I think that if you're born a woman you just kind of are a feminist, whether or not you want to admit it. But not every piece I've done or song I have written is driven by feminism."

"Some people see MY WOMAN as an aggressive record about a woman standing up for herself. If you really think about it that way, every day is aggressive for a woman. I just live my life and try to write about things that I've experienced in a very truthful, transparent way. You could call some of my ideas feminist, but first of all I'm just a human being, someone that likes things to be neutral and equal."

"I dare you to understand what makes me a woman," Olsen sings with abandon in "Woman", the central song on the record. "The music industry is dominated by men," she says. "All of my interviewers are men, most of the time. Everywhere I go, people ask me what it is like making a record as a woman. It's like if you were a dolphin and people asked what it was like to make a record as a dolphin? Well, I don't know, I've always been a dolphin."

A lot of people are still old-fashioned, in that respect, Olsen says. Like her parents. "Every time I see them, their first question isn't how is your career doing? We're so proud of you being a strong independent woman! It's more like: when are you going to settle down and let a man take care of you? Well, I don't need to do this thing to prove that I'm a real woman. I can do other things. But I don't argue with them, I appreciate the time that I have with them. And occasionally I remind them in a kind way that they are a little narrow-minded." [Laughs]

MY WOMAN is a record about love, Olsen says. But not so much romantic love. "It's interesting to be in love, but I don't see it as the all and everything. Why should it drive your sadness? Why should it drive your perspective on life? I like to talk about different kinds of love, and the limitations that come with them. What do you think of when you hear the title of the song 'Sister'? I think of a specific kind of love, a feeling that isn't romantic but sort of nostalgic. 'Not Gonna Kill You' sounds a little harsher and aggressive, but it has a similar message: love that never seeks to contain or to confine will always be there. Because you didn't put it in a box. That 'friendship' love can be more real than anything."

Olsen picked up themes of friendship and different kinds of love from the Italian author Elena Ferrante, whose Neapolitan Novels told the story of two women who grew up in Naples. "It's like The Godfather, but then from a matriarch's perspective. [Laughs] You see the characters develop, and you've liked them and you've hated them. And they go in and out of friendships and in and out of different kinds of fears and they're humble at times and strong at other times. All of the themes she covered are very real, very human, but she writes about them in a neutral way."

Feminism, love... Angel Olsen's songs are clearly a search for identity, for self-possession, for maintaining your personality in relation to someone else. In other words, it is a grasp at independence and freedom. The singer wants to go through life unchained. For her, MY WOMAN is an attitude: do everything yourself and stay in control. It's no coincidence that she directs her own videos now.

Olsen made her debut in 2011 with Strange Cacti, a cassette full of lo-fi folk songs. She caught the attention of Will Oldham aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy, who was looking for someone for The Babblers, his project with which he covered songs by Kevin Coyne and Dagmar Krause. He had PJ Harvey and Cat Power in mind, but he found Olsen. He fell in love with her wonderful voice, which he described as "a mixture of apprehension and satisfaction." "One time we were on some boat in France during a tour," Olsen recalls. "I was saying how much I loved Françoise Hardy, and he said that I was extremely talented too. I thought that was a great compliment. Will is a pretty reserved person. When he says something like that, you're like, wait, you have a heart! [Laughs] Although I disagreed. Françoise Hardy has a totally different aesthetic, but she is really fucking amazing."

Olsen spent two years with Will Oldham. But then she released Burn Your Fire for No Witness (in 2014), and her mix of grunge, folk, and Roy Orbison was a big hit. She suddenly had an audience herself, critics hailed her dark poetry and catapulted her to being "indie rock's new dark lady".

The up-tempo songs on the "A-side" of MY WOMAN are about that "new landscape" she saw herself catapulted into. "It's nice that people like what you're doing, but then you have to come up to their expectations. That is problematic. I want to protect my writing and keep on challenging myself. MY WOMAN is also about that, the power of making something, of being able to be creative. I wanted to be less over-intellectualistic in my lyrics and concentrate more on my voice, as an instrument. If I were a critic, I'd be exhausted by me sometimes. Part of that was the reason to make side B of this record. Something that had more music and a band sound to it."

She stresses that she likes music that doesn't have a ton of words, like stripped down piano music or synth music. MY WOMAN does start with some surprisingly poppy synths on "Intern". "At the end of the previous tour, I bought a piano. I had written a lot of piano songs while growing up, but just not a lot of lyric-based ones. This is the first time that I really figured out how to do that. It's a challenge, because a piano is almost like drums, you have to simplify what you write to make it work. At the same time I was listening to Julee Cruise, and Brian Eno, and even new age music, like Ariel Calma. Something without those damn words." [Laughs]

Olsen's feline eyes sparkle. "Excuse me if I'm over-explaining, I just feel like it's important to say what this record is about," she says, apologising for rattling on. She's suddenly interrupted by the loud noise of an animal on the roof above our heads. A pigeon? A crow? A pie in the sky? "Sounds like a flying cat," she laughs, momentarily released from her train of thought. "Meow meow meow."

ANGEL OLSEN
29/10, 19.30, Botanique, www.botanique.be