Angel Olsen Goes It Alone

LAST MONTH ANGEL OLSEN PERFORMED A SOLO show at the virtually empty Asheville Masonic Temple in Asheville, North Carolina. The show wasn’t in the singer-songwriter’s original plan for 2020 which had been a string of dates in North America and Europe in support of her then-latest album All Mirrors. Then the pandemic hit. So Olsen began doing a series of livestreamed performances.

Despite the sea of unoccupied chairs, Olsen, 33, performed with her signature conviction and vulnerability—qualities that have endeared her to both fans and music critics for the last 10 years. Standing in front of a painted scenic backdrop with just her guitar and a microphone, she played her introspective and melancholic music and displayed her uncanny ability to shift between different guises, from a folk