WTD’s Advent Calendar – 10 – Angel Olsen

Jon Doyle — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:17:36 +0000

Angel Olsen’s Half Way Home is one of my favourite releases of 2012. I should have written about it sooner, and it really deserves more than this measly little post, but for all sorts of reasons the blog has been quieter than we would have liked and we are now faced with the task trying to catch up with writing about all the music we’ve been listening to before the new year and the obligatory year-end lists. The arrangements are kept simple and take a back seat to Olsen’s pretty unbelievable voice, which wobbles and trembles with both fragility and a strange power. The lyrics are a mix of dark storytelling (the best example of which is Miranda) and a tumble of personal thoughts; hopes and confessions and worries. Olsen herself sums up the overarching theme of the album very nicely:

“I think no matter how stable I am I will always be searching, I guess that’s what this album is about. The endless searching, the fruitless waiting, the idea of a home that is inside yourself”.

She contemplates love and life and death and does so in a way that feels both fundamental in some timeless sense, and also novel and fresh and raw. It is an album with melancholy that cuts straight to the bone but it also feels oddly comforting. I found myself becoming increasingly attached to the album with repeated listens. It wasn’t so much a “grower” as a “grabber”, it reels you in and won’t let go, and if you’re anything like me then you won’t want to be let go.

You can get the album from Bathetic Records, although the initial pressing of the record has sold out. A second pressing is well underway and the label says all orders with be fulfilled as soon as possible. You can also get the album as a digital download from most of the big music sites, and can also listen to it in full via Spotify.

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Darwin Raymond – Night

Jon Doyle — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:19:00 +0000

’Night’ by Darwin Raymond is part of the Feedback Loop Label. The album is based on the events leading to and succeeding his wife’s death and, as Leonardo Rosado explains on the accompanying bio – explores how a single moment of extreme sadness or joy is surrounded by blurry but nonetheless memorable situations and actions and how the present is affected by memories of the past. Raymond pays homage to his own personal moment of pain but never allows the hint of optimism or redemption to disappear. Each track had one or more overlayed immediately afer recording in an effort to capture the feelings of each distinct time.

For me at least, ambient music is much more enjoyable with some sort of context in which to hear it. Much like a soundtrack for a film, you find yourself imagining what Raymond went through when he was making the album and suddenly the music makes sense. For example on ‘Riverside’ the fuzzy drone that outcompetes the other sounds is almost like the buzz of silence after something violent and shocking. The period of stillness where everything seems to have a slight hum, a residual vibration after a disturbance. The event is somehow still present despite time moving on. Reading the aims of the album which Raymond outlines on his website I would say this is exactly the kind of thing he was aiming for. A superb, haunting work which deserves some thought beyond casual listening.

Night is available from Bandcamp to stream or you can download the album here.

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WTD’s Advent Calendar – 10 – Angel Olsen

Darwin Raymond – Night