Angel Olsen Brings Her Sultry, Heartbroken Yodel to Denver Monday Night

With a voice that warbles with Slim Whitman‘s famous yodel and holds June Carter Cash‘s throaty, confident depth, Angel Olsen will be serenading a smallish Colorado crowd this Monday night, March 10th, in the perfectly appropriate intimacy of the Larimer Lounge. Olsen has been an indy music darling over the past few months, with some pretty fawning coverage in Spin Magazine, a Tiny Desk Concert on NPR, and some heavyweight status at next week’s SXSW festival, all of it well-deserved.

With nothing but a guitar and her sultry voice – including a haunting yodel she wields like a cold, lonely weapon – Olsen portrays loneliness, heartbreak and yearning on a deep, intensely personal level. So personal, in fact, that sometimes her confessional style approaches the incongruous and disconnected style of Jandek –  music’s ultimate outsider. But she comes back strong within each song with a wave of sensuous beauty that threatens to overwhelm, following along songwriting steps laid by the great Leonard Cohen.

She’ll be supporting her powerful second record – Burn Your Fire for No Witness, released on Jagjaguwar Records on February 18, 2014 – at the Lounge Monday night, her last US show before the SXSW gig, after which she’s headed to conquer Europe for a while. Be sure to get there before she gets too big for this kind of intimacy. Listen for her yearning in the steamy “White Fire,” or the quiet torment in “Lights Out,” and try not to be taken in.

Here’s a video of “High Five,” from the new record. Don’t miss this show – unless you’re resigned to being OK with just finding her along with everyone else next week.