“Olsen certainly knows how to capture and exercise melodramatic feelings in her music.” – The New York Times
“What’s remained central to Olsen’s work as a songwriter is her chillingly stoic sense of self-conviction, her songs’ declarations of romantic and artistic independence.” – NPR Music
Big Time was forged in a whiplash; the rare, fertile moments when both fresh grief and fresh love occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other. It’s an album about the expansive power of new love, written during the time Olsen was coming out as queer, and having her first experience of queer love and heartbreak. But this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss; both of Olsen’s parents passed within weeks of each other, just after Olsen came out to them. Three weeks after her mother’s funeral she was in the studio, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album, Big Time.
While her previous record, All Mirrors, was full of dramatic shifts and twists, here the surprises come in their simplicity—a slow swell of strings, instrumentation that cycles like a storm, or sparkling horns in a light-flooded break-up ballad. Big Time was recorded and mixed with co-producer Jonathan Wilson at his Fivestar Studios in Topanga, California. Drew Erickson played piano, organ, and handled string arrangements, and Olsen’s longtime bandmate, Emily Elhaj, played bass throughout. Big Time proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She’s working with an elastic mastery of her voice—both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.
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