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Angel Olsen solo
Angel Olsen
The Tote, Collingwood
Monday 26 March 2018
$50
THANK YOU FOR SENDING US AN ANGEL
It can feel almost disorientating and a little special to see bands and artists play in unexpected venues, whether it be big names in small rooms or just unusual rooms repurposed as rock venues. I think of seeing PIL at the Seaview Ballroom, Sonic Youth at Chasers Disco, The Dandy Warhols at Victoria Market, John Cale at the Central Club Hotel in Richmond, or Bob Dylan in a small club at Crown Casino.
Angel Olsen performing solo at The Tote fits into this category. As Dylan himself once sang, “What’s a sweetheart like you doing in a place like this?” For as much as The Tote holds iconic status among Melbourne’s music venues, it is also a genuine rock dive where the toilet cubicles don’t have doors, your feet stick to the carpet and there are odours that have been trapped inside for decades. It’s not somewhere you’d take an international visitor named Angel. On the other hand, as Talking Heads once sang, ‘Thank you for sending me an angel.’
Olsen was playing four nights at The Tote and unsurprisingly they were all sold out. I had a ticket for the opening night and was crammed into the sunken part of the room in front of the stage.
Such is the layout of the Tote’s Bandroom, Olsen had to push her way through the crowd to actually get to the stage.
Although ostensibly here to promote her album of B sides – Phases – she largely played new, unrecorded songs. There were one or two from Phases and her most recent album of new material, My Woman, but the rest of the set was entirely new, or at least unreleased.
Olsen also spoke quite a bit between songs and seemed in a pretty good mood, engaging in banter with the audience and telling stories about the songs she was playing, or just about getting pissed with Dan Kelly the night before.
It was quite oppressive in the band room, however, and a girl near me fainted half way through the show. At least when her friend took her outside it gave us a bit more space, but it remained largely uncomfortable for most of the night. it was advertised as an intimate show, but they didn’t mean intimacy with the performer, they meant intimacy with the random strangers either side of you. As this was my third gig in as many nights after Jason Isbell and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, my feet were particularly feeling it.
It was a good gig though. I enjoy hearing songs artists workshopping their new material, hearing the raw version before it is fleshed out by synths, bass and drums
It’s like seeing a Patricia Puccinini charcoal sketch before she builds her mutant sculptures. Besides, I’d seen Olsen play the songs from My Woman only a year or so ago at the Corner Hotel, so I was happy to see a new show.
Performing solo with just guitar also highlighted the purity of her voice, which was rich and, dare one say, angelic.
I don’t know when we’ll get to hear these new songs on record, or even if I’ll recognise them when we do, but it was a thrill to hear them on this night.
