Angel Olsen: Shut Up Kiss Me

Shut Up Kiss Me;

It seems like the good music just keeps on coming from these past couple of months. After a couple of years we've got something new from Angel Olsen: a whole new album. The album has only just been released today (2nd September) so I thought I'd just write about my favourite track from the bundle of her new singles, Shut Up Kiss Me.

She's recorded this album in a much different way to the way she recorded her previous album Burn Your Fire For No Witness. It's less enclosed and cleaner, which gives it a different feel. She's still got her distinctive vocals and the melancholic atmosphere/soundscape/lyrics but there seems to be more drive, in both the instrumental parts accompanying her and in her self.

Shut Up Kiss Me shows her passion in a different way, a stronger self where she's not standing on the sidelines anymore. There's this fight in her that wasn't entirely noticeable before - from her singing "I feel so lonesome, I could cry / But instead I'll pass the time / Sitting lonely with someone, lonely too" to "I ain't hanging up this time / I ain't giving up tonight / Even if you walk around / As though you think you're right / At your worst you still believe / It's worth the fight". This fight is even more clear from the concrete recordings as she no longer stays behind this gloom of her last album, her crisper recordings are less enclosed and are powerful. She's pulled herself out of that stereotype of this inevitable melancholy that she's been given through her previous work of the songs full of heavy reflection and gloom.

In the video of Shut Up Kiss Me she plays a different character and that's made clear by the line cut in at the end of the video, "Do I need to give more attitude, or?" This is how she's pulled herself out of it, she can write and play the music she finds easy and excels in but redirect the context of who and where it has been directed from.

This track, and the album, demonstrates a control and dominance behind her music that wasn't necessarily there in her last as she separates herself from the shadow that was hanging over the previous album. Her music always demonstrates brilliant artistry and she shouldn't be penalised for her melancholic tone. This album is going to excel as much as her previous album did, even more so.