Angel Olsen is telling Brixton Academy about a chance encounter earlier in the day with an old woman called Doris. The pair apparently got chatting while the musician was quietly taking in the sights of London from a park bench, and as fate would have it, Doris happened to be a gifted songwriter with a notebook to hand. Naturally they ended up penning a special little “ditty” for tonight’s show, which she is now going to play live for the very first time. The room hushes in anticipation. Then, she performs her biggest hit Shut Up Kiss Me. By now, this mildly amusing bit is a well-ingrained part ofOlsen’s live repertoire, serving as a mechanism to bring some newness to a song she’s steadily grown apart from.
The token inclusion of Shut Up Kiss Me aside, the setlist is predominantly skewed towards her most recent album Big Time, save for a middle section that whizzes through a couple of tracks each from 2016’s My Woman and 2019’s All Mirrors. The latter section is particularly arresting; the stage plunging into near darkness as Olsen and band become backlit silhouettes. Both Lark and All Mirrors rise from a soft murmur to an uneasy tangle of discordant strings and grinding synthesisers, her voice cracking into a fractured howl.
