Angel Olsen at Camden Dingwalls

Angel Olsen
Honeyblood
Camden Dingwalls, 25 March 2014

Last time I saw Angel Olsen she was playing support to an audience of disinterested Neko Case fans, a small figure on a big empty stage singing cynical but moving songs of love and life. A few months on and she's headlining a sold-out show at Camden Dingwalls that is filled to the rafters and hanging on her every word. What a difference a little buzz and a brilliant and critically acclaimed new album can make but it is well deserved.

Everything about Angel Olsen is striking from her elfin looks to her dark introspective songs to her lonesome monotone voice that suddenly changes to falsetto, like a country yodel, lifting the song and changing the mood completely. This time round though she has a backing band to help her, that's because the new record, Burn Your Fire For No Witness sees her abandoning the lo-fi, intimate feel of her first releases for a more distortion-filled, 90s sound that actually fits her style better than I would have imagined. Last time I saw her she seemed shy and didn't say much and although she still doesn't speak often in between songs having her comrades in arms around her definitely makes her seem more comfortable on stage and her powerful and melancholy voicewell album to rise above the guitars and drums and remain the star of the show, as it should.

I had heard that Olsen wasn't playing anything from her debut album, Half Way Home, on this tour, but she actually begins the show with two older numbers, Free, an almost 50s-sounding waltz and Drunk And With Dreams from her first EP, Strange Cacti. The rest of the show is mainly given over to Burn Your Fire songs and it's surprising how well she fits into the role of frontwoman, yet still seems to disappear into the emotion of each song. "I feel so lonely I could cry" she sings on Hi-Fi, referencing the old Hank Williams tune and in a lot of ways her music has a lot in common with country music (including the misery-filled lyrics) and live the backing on many of the songs, instead of rocking them up, sound more country noir than you'd expect, and, strangely it all seems to fit together perfectly.

The highlight of the show though comes near the end when her band leaves her alone of stage to

perform alone and the silence and stillness in the venue is incredible as she launches into, maybe her greatest song so far, Tiniest Seed, sounding even more delicate and hypnotic than on record, a fact certainly helped by the more intimate setting than I last saw her. She follows this with a stripped back performance of newer song, White Fire, her voice so sad and filled with pain that you can't help but be moved, while the slow finger-picking makes the whole thing sound haunting and eerie. It brings to mind Leonard Cohen at his most whispering and elegant.

Returning for the encore with her band back in tow she amps things up for a rocking version of Stars, to which someone in the audience jokingly shouts "Judas!" in reference to the inital audience response to Bob Dylan going electric. She laughs it off but the changes from lo-fi folk, to distortion fuelled alternative to sweet and sad country strummings is what makes Angel Olsen so interesting. Add to this that spine-tingling voice and you have the makings of an underground star.

Tonight's support, Glasgow duo Honeyblood, have the same battle Olsen herself had with Neko Case's audience and is the curse of every support act: the bored, close-minded audience. It's a shame because Honeyblood were pretty good. Two cute, petite Juno Temple-esque Scots, one on drums (Shona McVicar) and the other on vocals/guitar (Stina Tweeddale) with a nice line in energetic, poppy garage rock. The drums/guitar set up is obviously going to lead to White Stripes comparisons but their sound is more akin to the likes of Best Coast or Vivian Girls or even female led alternative bands from the 90s like Fuzzy or Jale. I actually thought they were sisters they looked so alike and had such a good energy between them. Good stuff indeed.

Honeyblood