Burn Your Fire For No Witness
On her third album, Angel Olsen rides waves of emotional intensity that take her from the depths of despair to the heights of hope. *Burn Your Fire for No Witness* is a worthy successor to her 2012 breakthrough *Half Way Home*, revisiting many of the earlier album’s themes with greater focus and maturity. Tracks like “Forgiven/Forgotten,” “Lights Out,” and “Enemy” probe the subtle torments of love with an unflinching hand. Olsen’s phenomenal vocal range—shifting from murmurs to howls and yodels with impressive control—brings out the expansive vision of “Iota” and the confrontational power of “High & Wild.” The album\'s pervasive angst gives way to a desperate yearning for healing and peace in the convulsive “Stars” and the tender “Windows.” Olsen’s expressive guitar work is lent sympathetic support by bassist Stewart Bronaugh and drummer Joshua Jaeger, who help her leap from the distorted alt-country of “Hi-Five” to the Leonard Cohen–like folk balladry of “White Fire” and the French chanson feel of “Dance Slow Decades.” Finely crafted and fearlessly sung, *Burn Your Fire* smolders with dark brilliance.
On her newest LP, '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, 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.
Burn Your Fire for No Witness finds the singer-songwriter inhabiting a fuller, louder sound and embracing punchier song structures. The blown-out, full-band energy enlivens Olsen, kindling an intensity that’s always been present in her songs and fanning the flames even higher.
When musicians re-imagine the sounds of the past, it’s almost always through a romanticized lens. For artists like Best Coast and Dum Dum Girls, the long-ago rock ’n’ roll of the ’50s and ’60s represents a kind of safe space, a respite where pouting hearts are soothed by nostalgic comforts. That isn’t the case,…
Angel Olsen is only just releasing her second full-length album, but the Missouri-born guitarist already has a fully formed personal philosophy: “No-one will ever be you for yourself”, she sang gravely on ‘The Sky Opened Up’, from 2012’s largely acoustic ‘Half Way Home’.
Angel Olsen gently stuns all in earshot with a record equally exultant as it is despondent.
Angel Olsen's beautiful, sad and, ultimately, useful sophomore album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness is not something to be objective about.
Check out our album review of Artist's Burn Your Fire for No Witness on Rolling Stone.com.
AllMusic provides comprehensive music info including reviews and biographies. Get recommendations for new music to listen to, stream or own.
Four songs into her exquisite second LP, Angel Olsen’s deeply expressive voice alights upon the album’s title. “If you’ve still got some light in you then go before it’s gone,” she whispers over skeletal arpeggios, “and burn your fire for no witness, it’s the only way to die.” Suddenly, a phrase that in isolation suggested defiance becomes profoundly sad; just one example of Olsen’s acute lyrical gifts.
As Angel Olsen's latest folksy effort, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, suggests, there's really nothing like a little hurt to help stir up songwriting sessions.
One of the most striking things about Angel Olsen's solo work to date might be the fact that she initially made her bones utilizing her enviable pipes harmonizing with Will Oldham and as one of Emmett Kelly's Cairo Gang.
<p>Angel Olsen blends toothsome indie rock with a delicate, ghostly vulnerability, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong></p>
Burn Your Fire for No Witness is noisier, brasher, and more confident than its languid predecessor.
Review of the new album by Angel Olsen "Burn Your Fire for No Witness". The full length is out February 18th on Jagjaguwar. Angel olsen plays 2/20 in NYC.
Angel Olsen's relentlessly miserably alt-pop is somehow saved from being oppressive or unappealing by her extraordinary voice, writes <strong>Michael Hann</strong>
[xrr rating=4.0/5]Angel Olsen has been steadily building buzz since the release of her EP Strange Cacti in -2011.
Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire for No Witness review: Won't you open a window sometime?
Burn Your Fire for No WitnessArtist: Angel OlsenGenre: AlternativeLabel: Jagjaguwar"Heartbreak, travel and transformation" informs the second full-length album by Missouri's Angel Olsen.