ANGEL OLSEN: LONDON GIG REVIEW
Live at The Apollo, London 11/2/2020
Squashing into the standing crowd at the packed Apollo, I could just about make out the silhouette of Angel, her sixties beehive casting a shadow onto the stage. As the lights came up, so did the pangs and bangs of ‘New Love Cassette’, shortly followed by that uniquely eerie voice we all know could only come from an Angel.
This carried straight into her title track, All Mirrors, which felt like the start of something special. As it ended, she finally addressed the crowd with a modest: “Hey!” Angel herself was charming and witty, someone impossible not to fall in love with. She handled the huge Hammersmith crowd like she was amusing a small group of friends: “What do you guys all do?”, she questioned in jest, to which one bold crowd member shouted: “I work in finance.” This made everyone laugh in unison before she replied: “Someone’s gotta do it!”
Live, the songs from the 2019 ‘All Mirrors’ album, felt different. Quite clearly it’s a post break-up album, which becomes obvious not just from the lyrics, but from nuances of mood throughout the tracks. In concert, she took you with her on this journey; you weren't just told how she felt, but felt it for yourself. Particularly in the opening album track, ‘Lark’, where its subdued, sad beginning moved quickly into a loud and deliberate expression of heartache. Those words that can so resonate with us, cut through the air with melancholy purpose: “This city’s changed/ It’s not what it was back when you loved me.”
Image Credit: Cameron McCool
Her character on stage reflected the diversity of her music; her shy, quiet, understated nature, the antithesis of her witty confident sentences. For a few minutes she teased us, threatening to play a new song that her band didn’t know, and acted with them, pretending to teach them chords. Then came in those familiar imperative words of ‘Shut Up Kiss Me’, with a big laugh and cheer from the crowd. She remained mysterious yet fierce, which seemed to mirror the juxtaposition of her vocals.
She moved on and said confidently: “This next song is a song for me - you know sometimes when you feel like you’ve just gotta sing for yourself?”, then began to play ‘Tonight’ quietly as if she was alone in her bedroom. Her voice was theatrical and dramatic and moving, and felt like a really important moment in a film.
The orchestra and lighting added to all the drama, and at points split out to look like old dandelions casting around her. To the left of the stage, the violin’s shadow was projected hyperbolically across the wall, quickly aiding a shivery moment.
As she moved through the setlist, the audience remained entranced while she continued to dance between her soft cushiony vocal and her emphatic, mobilising chant. The different levels of her voice seemed to paralyse the crowd.
She ended on stage alone with ‘Unfucktheworld’, before an encore where the band returned for one more ‘Chance’. Despite it being her biggest show to date, what struck me most was the intimacy of the performance. It felt so personal, as if each audience member became engulfed in their own thoughts and reminded of a specific moment or person. She makes you feel something, even if you felt nothing. It’s hard to find an artist that makes everyone in a huge crowd feel like an individual. It’s hard to speak to one person whilst singing to everyone. This is clearly an artist who has truly come into her own, belonging most comfortably on stage. It was sad and happy, nostalgic and futuristic, comforting and abandoning, all at the same time. It was magnificent.
