All Mirrors

Olsen’s bold and unexpected All Mirrors comes over three years after the release of My Woman, a top 10 critically praised album of 2016.

On her vulnerable new album, All Mirrors, Olsen takes an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations. In the process of making this album, she found a new sound and voice, a blast of fury mixed with hard-won self-acceptance. All Mirrors gets its claws into you on both micro and macro levels. Of course, there’s that singular vibrato, always so very close – seemingly simple, cooed phrases expand into massive ideas about the inability to love and universal loneliness. And then suddenly – huge string arrangements and bellowing synth swells emerge, propelling the apocalyptic tenor.

In creating All Mirrors, Olsen initially planned to work on a dual record release – a set of raw and real solo songs and a full band version of the same songs – both to be released at once. She recorded the solo version with producer Michael Harris in Anacortes, Washington. There, she was determined to keep it bare bones in order to contrast with the not yet recorded full-band record. Soon after that was completed, she began work on the more ambitious, fleshed-out version with producer John Congleton, with whom she collaborated on 2014’s breakout Burn Your Fire for No Witness, arranger Jherek Bischoff, multi-instrumentalist/ arranger/pre-producer Ben Babbitt, and a 14-piece orchestra.