By Celica Cook, SBM Student Life Editor
Angel Olsen’s fifth album, All Mirrors, her ghost-like vocals and wistful melodies will leave you with chills.
You will surely catch a feel or two within the contents of this album. All Mirrors is a raw depiction of human emotion, as Olsen passionately delivers a striking performance of love, anger and heartache.
In “Spring,” the fifth song on the album, Olsen paints her pain with electric keyboards and soulful vocals. “Don’t take it for granted/love when you have it” are the first lyrics of the song. With these words, she recognizes the worth of what she had. The next two lines “You might be looking over a lonelier shoulder” reveal how she feels regretful about her loss, in this case, of a lover. It is the truth of reality that all human beings struggle with—desiring to be loved, and feeling lonely when there is no one there to love.
Olsen connects with an audience of broken hearts on the path to healing. It’s easy to think that our feelings aren’t valid, and so we bury them, causing damage to ourselves in the end. Olsen’s music is a tidal wave of emotions tied up into melodies not designed to make you feel comfortable. She lets her emotions flow, whispering her secrets to the world in this masterpiece of an album.
The title of the album means exactly what it says—we are all mirrors of one another, trying to find ourselves underneath the layers of faces we’ve created for ourselves.
Olsen told NPR that her song “All Mirrors,” the title song of the album is about “a woman lost in a labyrinthine dream…afraid of the many selves that she carries, clouded and unable at first to face who she is meant to be.” Haven’t we all been there before? We find ourselves lost behind the cloudy faces of our own creation. All Mirrors is the comforting reality that you are not alone in the struggle of your human striving because the rest of humanity is right there with you.