Within a month, Olsen was in the hills outside of Los Angeles recording this album, grief and burgeoning love her carry-ons.
Two weeks after that, her mother was hospitalized, moved into hospice and died. Three days later, her father died – his funeral was how her family met her partner for the first time. As part of her relatively recent coming out process (she identified herself as gay publicly for the first time in the spring of 2021), Olsen told her parents the truth about who she is.
Olsen's life since she released her last record, 2020's Whole New Mess, has certainly contained the kind of cinematic human drama that is country music's bread and butter. For her sixth album, Big Time, the selection process could have sounded something like this: I want bruised hearts, I want resolutions, I want revelations, I want a conversation, I want a plaintive question, I want a long, steely look in a dusty rearview mirror. Piano it is.' Olsen's previous releases have leaned on folk, rock, pop and psychedelia. 'I want that vaulted-ceiling feeling,' another musician might say. Angel Olsen picks musical genres for her records the way other artists pick instruments.
