Burn Your Fire For No Witness is a sad and tormented album that reflects on troubled times. Angel Olsen’s voice, which ranges from drenched dreaminess to graceful discomfort to saloon singer, wonderfully and starkly expresses lament and longing and immediately drags you in – and down – with it.
Opening track ‘Unfucktheworld’ seems so pained and bleak that you can only imagine someone singing it on a desolate stormy evening behind mascara-streaked eyes. It thankfully gets a bit brighter, though the album is littered with lines like the all-encompassing hopelessness of “It all began to hurt” and “everything is tragic, it all just falls apart”.
Olsen strives to seek meaning in the negative thoughts and experiences of her world, and is seemingly drawing on a personal well of an almost endless darkness, capable of extinguishing any flame as she sings, “If you’ve still got some light in you, then go before it’s gone”.
The songs are supported by a freshly formed band and sparsely played electric guitar which, combined with the singer’s remarkable voice, carry the torrid tales with a gentle, haunting beauty. Tracks such as ‘Lights Out’ reflect Olsen’s recent immersion into the world of country music – and the narratives of hurt and heartbreak that rests as its backbone.
An almost timelessly twanged, “I feel so lonesome I could cry” is sang with the modern twist of “sitting beside somebody who is lonely too”. The sunlight through the open window of the last track brings much needed hope, and is a satisfying end to the steady narrative thread that will no doubt envelop many listeners.
Listen to ‘Hi-Five’ from Burn Your Fire For No Witness here:
