Out Now: Angel Olsen Reinvents Her Own Material with Stripped-Down New Album, ‘Whole New Mess’ (Listen)

Among indie/rock circles, Angel Olsen has established herself as a special, can’t-miss talent in recent years, and today she returns with Whole New Mess. Olsen’s fifth full-length album and the follow-up to 2019’s All Mirrors, part of the collection re-imagines much of All Mirrors in intimate, more stripped-back arrangements.

(Click here to buy Whole New Mess on CD and click here for vinyl, from our Rock Cellar Store).

Angel Olsen previewed the release recently with a live video performance of “Waving, Smiling,” filmed at the Masonic Temple in North Carolina:

More on the album, per a press release:

At least nine of the eleven songs on Whole New Mess should sound familiar to anyone who has heard All Mirrors, Olsen’s grand 2019 masterpiece that earned high honors on prestigious year-end lists and glossy spreads in stylish magazines. “Lark,” “Summer,” “Chance”—they are all here, at least in some skeletal form and with slightly different titles. But these are not the demos for All Mirrors. Instead, Whole New Mess is its own record with its own immovable mood, with Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the Pacific Northwest. If the lavish orchestral arrangements and cinematic scope of All Mirrors are the sound of Olsen preparing her scars for the wider world to see, Whole New Mess is the sound of her first figuring out their shape, making sense for herself of these injuries.

Stream Whole New Mess below, via Spotify.