Angel Olsen professed a desire to scream the stars out of the universe Sunday at a sold-out Lincoln Hall. While her voice remained earthbound, the singer/songwriter managed just about every other vocal feat during an exceptional 75-minute set filled with tragedy and heartbreak. Backed by a trio, the former Chicago-based performer framed personal narratives with well-developed arrangements that further intensified her music’s emotional pull.
Having demonstrated significant creative growth since her breakout appearance at last summer’s Pitchfork Festival, Olsen is far removed from the artist that opted for lo-fi minimalism after self-releasing a cassette in 2010. Her recent “Burn Your Fire for No Witness” album reflects the progression toward fuller, band-assisted directions. Onstage, however, Olsen and company achieved bigger, fiercer and more dynamic sounds that already make her records and “indie” status seem limited. No matter the subject or style, her acrobatic voice soared above the fray.
Wearing a baseball cap and platform heels, and laughing between songs, Olsen could’ve been mistaken for an upbeat tomboy. But when she opened her mouth to sing, mood and identity shifted. The North Carolina transplant sang about troubled relationships—and the confusion, sadness and breakups that ensue—with the maturity, boldness and confidence of a Grand Ole Opry veteran. Olsen’s achy timbre and trembling Southern accents stemmed from similar old-time country tradition, yet her ever-changing deliveries also drew from gospel, garage rock and jazz.
Maintaining unflinching self-control, Olsen focused on intricate phrasing. She pushed her falsetto to points where words dissolved, allowed whispers to shiver amidst quiet backdrops and uttered sentences in monotone to convey disgust. The vocalist/guitarist turned interrogative verses into poisonous daggers and murmurs into romantic pleas, the contrasts underlining vacillations between obsession and detachment, need and want, love and hate. The musicians followed her lead, shading melodies during ruminative moments (“Windows”) and piling heavier, noisier passages atop menacing remarks (“Sweet Dreams”).
“You might as well be blind,” Olsen hissed on “High & Wild,” one of multiple songs dealing with ruptured communication and rotten chemistry. Eschewing easy answers and self-pity, the singer often dismissed blissful outcomes from the realm of possibility. On ballads such as “May As Well,” her high-and-lonesome warble strained from confronting sorrowful realities.
Despite the pain, Olsen found solace in knowing it’s better to have loved than never to have really lived at all. Closing with a solo “Some Things Cosmic” and evoking Judy Garland crooning “Over the Rainbow” in “The Wizard of Oz,” she too wished for—and received—relief in the form of escapism.