Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Angel Olsen.
Singular sound … Angel Olsen.
Singular sound … Angel Olsen.

The 50 best albums of 2019, No 6: Angel Olsen – All Mirrors

This article is more than 4 years old

The offbeat, mesmerising songs on this breakup record are both seductively gorgeous and designed to set your teeth on edge

In a year when the concept of self-partnership entered the lexicon thanks to a viral Emma Watson interview, a cache of pop anthems soundtracked the fledgling “single positivity” movement, from Lizzo’s Truth Hurts (“I put the sing in single”) to Selena Gomez’s Lose You to Love Me. Those looking for a more contemplative and perspicacious tribute to solo life may, however, be tempted by the contents of All Mirrors, the mesmerising fourth album by the American singer-songwriter Angel Olsen.

A breakup record that muses on the nature of relationships without romanticising them, All Mirrors sees Olsen drill down into the damaging power-play of past loves, interrogating how they have made her feel less-than, as well as the self-knowledge and peace their endings have occasioned. On the spellbinding opener Lark, she chronicles the effect of a patronising partner; the sweetly stoned Too Easy covers the stupefaction of early-days infatuation; the tinny, quivering synthpop of New Love Cassette the self-negation that stems from being a one-person support system.

The second half provides the succour of hard-won understanding. Tonight is a muttered, folky post-breakup celebration, in which the narrator finds herself fully intact following a split, while the deliriously retro soul of Chance rejects relationships as a medium for self-realisation: “I’m leaving once again / Making my own plans / I’m not looking for the answer / Or anything that lasts,” Olsen murmurs dreamily.

Angel Olsen: All Mirrors – video

Suitably for a paean to independence, All Mirrors floats adrift, not chiming with any trendy subgenre or slotting into Olsen’s back catalogue. The product of a sound-shifting creator – until this year, she was best known as the indie-folk darling who swapped lo-fi strumming for big-chorused glam-rock on her 2016 album, My Woman. All Mirrors sees the 32-year-old veer off course once more. Where her previous material radiated an immediate, scrappy energy, All Mirrors is leisurely and pristine. It is a series of expansive, indeterminately retro confections whose introspective drama is underlined by the doleful wails of a 12-piece string section, and the album’s airless production creates a heady, almost narcotic effect.

Musically, All Mirrors has little interest in the zeitgeist – at a time when it seems as if indie music is bending over backwards to fit with pop tastes, it is gratifying to hear a record so unconcerned with both mainstream appeal and countercultural cool. There’s a quaint, elegiac quality to many of its tracks, a mannered sweetness and imperious splendour that gives them a 1950s sheen. Olsen’s voice reverberates around this sealed-off sonic world, oscillating between a sonorous, stilted melodrama that recalls Roy Orbison and a girlish but eerily blank affectation. This is by no means an album that deals in cosy nostalgia – instead, there is something wilfully offbeat about Olsen’s unpredictable song structures, intricate artifice and insidious dread that stalks her saccharine melodies.

Despite all its intoxicating stylisation, Olsen originally wrote this record as a series of skeletal, back-to-basics songs. Behind the atmospherics are melodies that burrow into the subconscious and lyrics that ring with reflective wisdom and vulnerability. It’s a body of work that’s comforting and heartening in the way a journey towards enlightenment should be, but it’s also challenging, full of ambivalence and irresolvable confusion – a dichotomy echoed in the music, which is both seductively gorgeous and designed to set your teeth on edge. Mainly, All Mirrors derives its power from its integrity: this is an album about putting an end to changing to please other people – a sentiment present in Olsen’s sagacious lyrics as well as her singular sound.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Angel Olsen: ‘I don’t really want to be a pop star’

  • Angel Olsen: All Mirrors review – shapeshifting songs to impress and unnerve

  • Julia Jacklin: 'I was too tired to try to be anything more than I was'

  • Sharon Van Etten: ‘The more I let go, the more I progress as a human being’

  • On my radar: Carrie Brownstein’s cultural highlights

  • Angel Olsen review – hear her roar

  • Female fury and a gangster in a dress: meet the pop stars toppling gender stereotypes

  • Angel Olsen: My Woman review – love in all its complicated glory

  • Angel Olsen: My Woman review – beautiful songs full of things to pore over

  • Nadia Reid: Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs review – introspection and oomph on indie-soul debut

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed