In a small record shop in London, on a humid Sunday afternoon, Angel Olsen sits on the counter, dressed in double denim, legs dangling, guitar across her lap, ready to play a handful of songs from her new album Big Time. “Do you guys do this often?” she says, to a crowd of about 30 people, most of them in a state of hushed awe. She smiles. “Cos I certainly don’t.”
She is playing music in front of people for the first time in a very long time. In fact, it is her first time playing these songs in front of people at all. Big Time is an intimate record, telling deeply personal stories of romance and grief, and Olsen is allowing herself to be more open than she has ever been before. Some of the songs require her voice to go so low that it drops into a whisper. You have to come close to catch it.
