Big Time, Angel Olsen’s stunning 2022 record, is “one big expanse, where the past and the future are knowable and deeply felt, fully enclosed in the moment” (Pitchfork). It brought Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before, and was deemed one of the year’s best releases by the likes of The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NPR and countless others. Olsen has announced Forever Means, her new EP out April 14th on Jagjaguwar, and presents its lead single/lyric video, “Nothing’s Free.” Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold a common theme: within the wisdom borne from the twin stars of grief and love comes the realization that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it. Olsen says, “Forever is to remain curious, never letting yourself think you’re finished learning or exploring, while trying also to be kind and honest.”
EP opener/lead single “Nothing’s Free,” is a song that is, according to Olsen, “about that point when self-denial breaks, and you notice how long you’ve been restraining who you are.” On “Nothing’s Free,” Olsen exudes comfort with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable. “It felt really difficult to exclude it from Big Time,” she admits, “but it felt more soulful than the direction of that record, it was coming from a different place. For me, when I wrote it, I was coming to terms with my identity and sexuality. I was opening up in a new way.”
A thoughtful extension of the Big Time chapter, Forever Means holds space for “Nothing’s Free” and its three companions. These four precious songs are, in Olsen’s words, “in search of something else.” Co-produced and mixed by Jonathan Wilson, these are songs from Olsen’s roads traveled and the one’s ahead. “I was somewhere traveling,” says Olsen, “stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking ‘what does forever really mean? What are the things I’m seeking in friendship or love, and how can forever be attainable if we’re always changing?’” Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realized “maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself.”
Surrounding the release of Big Time, Angel Olsen was profiled in The New Yorker, graced television screens across the country through performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and collaborated with Sturgill Simpson to reimagine its title track. Having recently wrapped a run of North American tour dates, Olsen is currently touring Australia, with full dates listed below and tickets on sale now.
Purchase/Stream Angel Olsen’s Big Time
Watch “All The Good Times” Video
Watch “Through The Fires” Official Video
Watch Angel Olsen & Sturgill Simpson’s “Big Time” Lyric Video
Best of 2022 Praise For Angel Olsen
“Angel Olsen turns, incongruously, to the traditionally minded sounds of vintage country and torch-song pop. Turns out they suit the wailing grandeur of her voice perfectly […] she can’t help but make them her own thanks to the fiery force of her musical personality.”
— The New York Times, “Best Albums of 2022”
“Coming off the kind of year that might have buried anyone […] Angel Olsen instead spun it into gold”
— Entertainment Weekly, “The 10 Best Albums of 2022”
“Big Time upholds [Olsen’s] penchant for eluding genre limitations by evoking the nostalgia of classic country. Her voice is at its most compelling, positioned front and center amidst a compendium of pedal steel and Mellotron.” — NPR Music, “Best Albums of 2022”
“Angel Olsen has certainly never had a hard time making her songs resonate on an emotional level; […] Big Time, takes things to a new a level” — Inside Hook, “Our Favorite Albums of 2022”
“The title is wryly self-aware: Olsen’s artfully moody albums have always been beloved for their crushing intensity and expansive grandeur. Big Time adds a new warmth, generosity, and brightness”
— Rolling Stone, “The 100 Best Albums of 2022”
“this is Olsen’s defining moment […] on Big Time, Olsen knocks it out of the park.”
— Uproxx, “The Best Albums Of 2022”
“Angel Olsen’s voice, colossal but intimate, vulnerable when she wants to be but electrifyingly resolute when she has to be, was made for country music, for the warm caresses of deep reverb and pedal steel, for searing explorations of grief and soaring declarations of new love.”
— The Ringer, “The 33 Best Albums of 2022”
“‘Big Time’ is the kind of rare, generation-spanning album that you could give to your sister, your aunt or your grandparents” — Variety, “The Best Albums of 2022”
“[Big Time is] starry-eyed and sighing, affecting lopes about loss and the unending passing of time, but [Olsen] still imbues them with her flair for the dramatic, creating a collection of songs both cozy and cataclysmic.” — Stereogum, “The 50 Best Albums of 2022”
“[T]he country melancholy works on Big Time. [Angel Olsen] has the entire scope and we melt.”
— Under The Radar, “Top 100 Albums of 2022”
“Big Time isn’t a bummer opera; it’s a last-call, honky-tonk bar encore—and it rules.”
— Paste, “The 50 Best Albums of 2022”
Forever Means EP Artwork
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify | Bandcamp
