“ The first time hurts the most,” she says.“ They say it in love songs, but it’ s true. Because the first time you really give yourself to someone, you’ re unprotected. You have no shield, you have no references for what to look out for. You’ re just open. I often am like,‘ Am I in love with this person, or is it that I have a love and I’ m in love with the love I have, and there’ s a preconceived ideal attached to that, and they end up fitting it in some way?’
“ I think a lot of these songs play into that,” she says.“ It feels a little more autobiographical, or like I’ m unafraid of saying for the first time,‘ Yeah, this is stuff I’ ve dealt with,’ because I wouldn’ t have been able to write it if I didn’ t. But I also think there are times when you peel back the construct that’ s the ideal of what you want, and you can be surprised by what’ s there. It might not be what you would expect or want, but it could be better.”
There’ s an implicit hopefulness in her words, but Olsen’ s ideas about love have progressed in a parallel fashion along with her records. Where Strange Cacti and Half Way Home showed the singer wide-eyed but possessed of cautious wisdom, Burn Your Fire for No Witness is scorned, its pervasive existential dread and loneliness( which Olsen playfully admits was inspired in part by her reading of Kierkegaard) fueling the caustic simmer of distorted guitars. My Woman, however, takes the next step in the progression, more concerned with the practical experience of going through— and triumphing over— heartbreak in order to emerge as a person who has grown and who is ready to encounter new experiences.
“ My Woman is actually going through it,” she says.“ And then [ asking ],‘ How do I get out of it?’ I have to accept that I don’ t have an answer. It’ s going to keep happening, but it’ s OK because I like going up the hill. I like seeing the things when I go up the hill, and then when I have to come back down I just need to learn to laugh more. Because there’ s going to be another hill! If it’ s with a person or with myself, there’ s going to be a hill.”
While the entirety of My Woman is informed by such insights, the second half of the record grapples most effectively with weightier material.“ Sister,” the heaviest song on the album, opens the side. Olsen calls out delicately for someone who seems to be just out of reach:“ Piece us together / Know it’ s forever / Show me the future / Tell me you’ ll be there.” The feeling of longing for real connection with another person is palpable. Its doppelgänger,“ Woman,” finds the singer searching like a forlorn alchemist for a way to bottle up and preserve a shared understanding.“ I’ d do anything to see it all / The way that you do,” she sings. Finally, she arrives at a place of concession in the somber closer,“ Pops,” whose idiosyncratic meter conjures Neil Young’ s Buffalo Springfield hit,“ Mr. Soul”:“ I’ ll be the thing that lives in the dream when it’ s gone.”
Angel Olsen, the person, seems hell-bent on reconciling the significant disparity between her true self and her public image by being as active as she can in her role as an artist, and by documenting her life, her feelings, and her values in this way as much as possible. Whether it’ s auditory, visual, or both, it doesn’ t much matter. Olsen is uniformly enthused by everything that is rightly coming toward her up the Blue Ridge Parkway. She recalls the elation she felt, even as an ulcerstricken insomniac while mixing the record, from the simple feeling of being deeply immersed in her work.
“ Even though I was physically hurting and it was unhealthy, I was just so excited,” she says.“ It’ s the happiest I think I’ ve been in a long time.”
“ You’ ll never be mine,” she sings early on in My Woman, and in a sense she could be singing to the listener’ s preconceived notions of what she might be like— the uncertain picture that has caused her a measure of anxiety ever since her lilting vibrato first passed through a microphone and audiences readily took notice. Perhaps Olsen is right. Maybe this can never truly happen. Maybe we aren’ t meant to have complete control over the way others perceive us. But with each song she writes or video she crafts, with each step she takes toward a life of creative consonance, Olsen and her unruly mirror image draw one step closer to meeting each other someday in the swirling breeze at the top of a hill.
64 FLOOD