Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness

An occasional touring partner of Will Oldham, Angel Olsen is carving a space as the bedsit moocher you can flail your mane to. Her second album is both fractured and doe-eyed – and, yet, amidst the sad plucking and star-crossed lyrics, are blasts of reverb and shrieked vocals, so that Olsen comes on like a rriot girl crashing poetry circle night.

Raised in St Louis, Angel’s music looks all around for inspiration – there are hints of gothic folk in her cadences, while her guitar playing, strident, plugged in, suggests a disciple of ‘90s indie pop. The record is produced by John Congleton, who has worked with Modest Mouse and, most recently St Vincent, and it is the latter that Olsen recalls, as she pushes against the constraints by which female songwriters are supposed to abide.

Her voice moving from a coo to snarl, she sounds at once vulnerable and angry, the music dipping and swerving in sympathy with her moods. Burn Your Fire is frequently extraordinary – the calling card of a thrilling new voice in alternative rock.