What's on My Playlist: Angel Olsen

Chicago folk rocker Angel Olsen makes some of the most honest music I've ever heard. While much of that honesty can be found in beautifully bleak lyrics, it is just as much the intimate coffee shop acoustics and warbling delivery that open listeners up to themselves. I recommend watching her haunting performance of "Some Things Cosmic" (see below) to get a good first taste. Her sound comes comes across as nostalgic with a distinctly simple Americana folk twang, but her delightfully insightful crooning creates poetry for younger generations of urban romantics. "A lot of songs have to do with this feeling like you're this being that was once in a womb...and now you have a womb. You are in this womb of existence, and who knows what's outside of it?," Olsen voiced to Pitchfork Media about her most recent album Half Way Home 1 (2012). Deep--her music definitely calls for some solitary self contemplation. But there's enough bluesy comfort to keep cozy with on tracks like "Free" and "Tiniest Seed." Her latest works however, have taken a new avenue; "Hi-Five" and "Forgiven/Forgotten" shed the raw acoustic framework for garage rock fuzz, giving Olsen an edgier yet still sincere attitude. Her next album Burn Fire for no Witness is set to release February 18.

1 http://pitchfork.com/features/update/9057-angel-olsen/