'White Fire', Angel Olsen's Devastating New Track

This new song by Angel Olsen sounds so different from the two previous ones I listened to, the pop rock ‘Forgiven/Forgotten’ and the wonderful Roy-Orbison-esque ‘Hi-Five’… yeah this one is so intimate and so stripped down that you can touch her pain through this sad guitar that pulsates like a throbbing headache you nevertheless don’t want to get rid of.

‘White Fire’, the new song off her upcoming and second album is a slow and long one, ruminating longing, regret and hurt, it’s simply devastating and the song will remind you the style of her debut album ‘Half Way Home’ that she released in 2012. Her druggy-sleepy voice, like numbed by the pain, sounds nothing like the fierce croon we heard on the other songs… it’s certainly a less immediate love affair, it takes a bit more time to enter Olsen’s darker side, but ‘White Fire’ made me suddenly think about a female version of Leonard Cohen.

About half-way through the song, her voice changes, as if she was awaking from a long winter, and entering directly summer, ‘If you’ve still got some light in you then go before it’s gone/Burn your fire for no witness it’s the only way it’s done/Fierce and light and young’ she sings at the end of the song… Meaning this song is an essential track of the upcoming album ‘Burn Your Fire for No Witness’, which promises to be quite an eclectic project. It should drop on February 18th via Jagjaguwar, and I will see Angel at the Echoplex next month!