For Missouri-born, singer-songwriter and guitarist Angel Olsen, the recording of her second album was a relaxed and enjoyable process, despite the fact that she was working on her own, highly personal material in creative collaboration for the first time, with musicians she'd been playing with for barely six months. That the three are now a band proper says much about not only their talent, but also the singer's desire to push her extraordinarily compelling songs into new territory and watch them develop.
Olsen, of course, has an impeccable cooperative pedigree. As a member of Emmett Kelly's The Cairo Gang, she's toured with Bonnie "Prince" Billy (on whose Wolfroy Goes To Town album she appeared) and has twice duetted with Marissa Nadler, to devastatingly minimal effect, but her first two recordings were very much Olsen in solo mode. The kitchen-recorded, reverb-shrouded Strange Cacti EP from 2010 was almost spectral in its simplicity, while Half Way Home, her debut album of 2012 was a work of poetic profundity delivered on acoustic guitar, with mere hints of double bass and drums and by a remarkable voice. Now, Burn Your Fire For No Witness.
