Angel Olsen: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.

Bob Boilen | October 7, 2020
Angel Olsen is sitting on the porch of her new Asheville, N.C., home singing "Whole New Mess." She wrote it long before she bought this house. The song is actually about addictions, defining her "home" amidst a life of touring that kept her on the road for large chunks of time. Much like this Tiny Desk performance, the original recording is just her stunning voice and guitar (minus the birds and the trees), recorded in a church-turned-studio a few years ago.

Angel Olsen also plays "Iota," a song that wishes "that all the world could see something for what it is at the same time." I've always thought of this as a hopeful song, and hearing it a half-dozen years after its release, the hope feels beyond her reach; nevertheless, for the handful of minutes she's singing, I feel comforted. Angel leaves us with "Waving, Smiling," a farewell song. She says goodbye to the sounds around her, the birds, the chainsaws, and leaves us with a theme of acceptance, bittersweet but without regret.

SET LIST
"Whole New Mess"
"Iota"
"What It Is (What It Is)"
"Waving, Smiling"

MUSICIANS
Angel Olsen: guitar, vocals

CREDITS
Video By: Josh Sliffe
Audio By: Adam McDaniel for Drop of Sun Studios
Producer: Bob Boilen
Video Producer: Morgan Noelle Smith
Audio Mastering Engineer: Josh Rogosin
Associate Producer: Bobby Carter
Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey
Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann