★★★★★
So there's this Ergs! song that I just discovered, and in the three-odd months I've spent trying to write and rewrite a review for Burn Your Fire for No Witness--a triumphant, utterly confusing record with subtleties I call shitstorms--it's taught me more than Angel Olsen has about what she means when she writes in overwhelming platitudes and superlatives, only to then say "sometimes"...
- cokemachineglow.com
2014-07-26
★★★★★
On Angel Olsen's latest album, the singer-songwriter finds an apt balance between lo-fi acoustic folk and bluesy electric rock. The record, a follow-up to her debut Half Way Home , feels both timeless and vintage, eschewing complex and polished production elements for intimately wrought numbers that embrace raw sincerity. On "Hi-Five," a gritty, static-laced track, Olsen achingly wails, "I'm giving you my heart/ Are you giving me your heart...
- www.relix.com
2014-03-19
★★★★★
Angel OlsenBurn Your Fire for No Witness (Jagjaguwar) Drawing upon a finely curated mixture of Middle American postpunk, British folk, and classic country torch-bearing, Angel Olsen's second album puts the Missouri-born singer-songwriter's strengths in the best possible light. Her mastery of emotional vocal nuance brings to mind a hypothetical grandchild of Marianne Faithfull and Roy Orbison in that drama, depth, and delicacy get parsed out in strategic amounts...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2014-03-13
★★★★★
"I am the only one now," sings Angel Olsen to conclude Unfuck the world (the lead track on her second LP) and the quiet, tape recorded tune is an apt prologue for the record's thematic exploration of - and struggle against - solitude. "I" is easily the most used word on Burn Your Fire For No Witness, but the perspective isn't closed off. Rather, Olsen draws from subjective hurt to depict feelings that encroach upon all of us...
- www.beat.com.au
2014-03-04
★★★★★
Angel Olsen buries a thesis statement at the end of her third album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness. On "Window," over a barely audible kick drum and the sparsest of chords, she sings, "We live our shadows down / It's how we get around," pushing her voice up to the limits of her register; for hymnal resonance, an organ accompanies the subsequent order, "Open a window sometimes / What's so wrong with the light...
- www.spin.com
2014-02-22
★★★★★
If you've heard Angel Olsen before then you're one of the few outside the US that have stumbled over her acoustic debut Half Way Home, a collection of stark, contemplative songs that the Missouri native released on an indie label in 2012. Or you might recognise her distinctive voice from her collaborations with Bonnie Prince Billy. But if you have heard of her before, you probably aren't expecting Burn Your Fire For No Witness, her visceral second album...
- music.thedigitalfix.com
2014-02-24
★★★★★
Anyone looking to invite Angel Olsen over to be the life of their party, might want to rethink that move. Based on the evidence of the singer-songwriter's sophomore full length, Olsen is locked in a moody, melancholy, introspective morass that isn't going to lift soon. If the Velvet Underground recorded a second album with Nico, it would likely sound similar to this eleven song set of ruminations about misplaced love, broken relationships and feeling lost and alone in the world...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2014-02-20
★★★★★
When starting Angel Olsen's latest release, you might think you have just pressed play on yet another album full of lightly strummed guitars and delicate vocals about sweethearts. Let's just put your troubled mind to rest. Burn Your Fire For No Witness is not one of those albums. The album's purposefully quiet opener, "Unfucktheworld," acts as the fragile preamble to an explosive collection of honest songs about the internal struggles with life after the buildup and breakdown of love...
- filtermagazine.com
2014-02-21
★★★★★
?????????? The most immediately recognizable difference between Angel Olsen's debut album and the follow-up, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, is an exhilarating confidence woven through each song. It shows in her voice, Olsen's essential instrument that cascades over rolling waves of guitar strums and AM radio fuzz. The self-assuredness of her new record is palpable in its words, with the midwest-singer constantly pursuing honesty in the situations of which she sings...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2014-02-21
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