“I Just Want to Keep Things Moving”: In the Wake of Personal and Musical Transformation, Angel Olsen Is Touring Australia

Angel Olsen was meant to tour Australia in 2020 – following the release of her lush, orchestral fifth album All Mirrors – before the pandemic grounded her at home in the US. When the Missouri-born singer-songwriter finally hits our stages in February and March (for her first Australian tour in seven years), it’ll be as a profoundly different artist to the one who would have arrived three years ago. After all, a lot has happened in that time.

“I don’t want you to publish this article and be like, ‘Angel Olsen is tired,’” she says with a laugh midway through our conversation, knowing how the most flippant comment can become a headline. But the t-word does come up several times throughout our chat. And for good reason.

When we speak, Olsen’s just finished a North American tour, and she’s got a week at home in Asheville, North Carolina, before embarking on her Australian tour. She’s also just been to the gym.

But there’s a greater, deeper reason for her weariness. The past few years have been a significant time of change for the singer. In 2021, at the age of 34, Olsen came out as queer to her parents. Three days later, her father died. A few weeks after that, her mum passed away. It’s the kind of unimaginable grief that would render most immobile. Three weeks after her mum’s funeral, Olsen was in the recording studio cutting tracks for her latest (and sixth) album, the country-tinged Big Time, released last June.

“Yeah, I just … I feel old,” she says over Zoom from her sunroom-turned-piano-room, before laughing heartily. “But I’m not old. I’m 36. I just feel tired, you know? I was talking to someone else and I was like, ‘I felt like I went through another puberty,’” referring to her coming out. “And then when my parents passed away, I was sort of stuck in this numb period of grief for most of the year, after the record had been finished.”

Big Time moves between past heartbreak, new love and fresh grief, tracking Olsen’s transformation over the last few years on an album that merges the elegiac and heartrending melancholy of her previous records with a newfound embrace of country, Americana and power pop, which she found herself listening to through the pandemic.

“It was the many layers of being in isolation, and then all these changes happening in my personal life – I feel like I was quieted, and I was listening to sort of simple stuff … a lot of Lucinda Williams and Neil Young and Big Star and stuff like that, and just kind of revisiting ’70s rock. I just really like all this stuff. I’ve always really liked it. And I think I was sort of avoiding country for so long.

“It’s not like anything crazy new,” she adds. “I just wanted this album to be really classic, minimal, about the words and the songs. And no theatrics, you know?”

Unsurprisingly after the events of the last few years, the album features a recurring theme of saying goodbye to her former self, and shedding expectation – in songs like Ghost On (“I can’t fit into the past that you’re used to, I refuse to”), This Is How It Works (“I won’t get attached to the way that it was, this is how it works for me now”) and Go Home (“Forget the old dream, I got a new thing”).

Olsen seems to have come out of this turbulent period more self-assured, and with her eyes on the future. “I feel like I appreciate what I’m doing more than I did in the past,” she says. “Even though things were growing and I was becoming successful, I didn’t feel like it was enough. And now I kind of feel like I have made enough records, I don’t feel worried about who I am in my music career … I just want to keep things moving and feeling alive in it and feeling motivated to continue pushing myself. But how do I do that and also take care of myself, you know?”

She’s already got some answers. Olsen tells me she’s been working out again, going for long walks and journaling, and she’s stopped going to parties. “I’m just, like, too old for that shit right now. I just want to hang out with people and have meaningful conversations … And then I think just travelling and playing music, I remembered that I had a purpose. And that helped … Because I think, on top of the grieving, I hadn’t been working, like not in the real way that I was used to, so it just brought my confidence back – to know that I can connect with people.”

Getting back to touring has had some surprising revelations, though. “The other day I ate the worst burrito of my life two hours before the show,” says Olsen. “I had the worst acid reflux the whole show... The tour manager brought me a Tums [antacid] before I could get back on stage. I guess this is what nearing your forties and being on tour is like. You just need Tums now.”

You get the sense that Olsen feels freer to be herself than ever before. She’s using Instagram to share personal updates, from a tongue-in-cheek post about growing out her signature bangs to the recent death of her cat. “I was just like, ‘Damn, shit is just, like, coming down,’” she says of experiencing this latest loss. “I think that’s what I mean by I’m tired,” she laughs before switching gears. “I mean, I won’t be tired playing the show. I’m gonna have a good time. I know how to dance and have fun.

“Playing the record feels really light,” she adds. “It feels like a fresh breath of air.”

Angel Olsen tour dates:

Castlemaine
February 24 – Theatre Royal

Hobart
February 25 – Mona Foma

Melbourne
March 1 – Melbourne Recital Centre – sold out

March 3 – Melbourne Recital Centre – sold out

Brisbane
March 4 – Nine Lives Festival

Sydney
March 6 – Sydney Opera House

Perth
March 7 – The Rechabite, as part of Perth Festival – sold out
March 8 – The Rechabite, as part of Perth Festival – sold out

Melbourne
March 10 – Brunswick Ballroom – sold out

March 11 – Golden Plains

Adelaide
March 13 – Womadelaide

Tickets are on sale now.

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