Angel Olsen - My Woman (Mobile Fidelity Pressing) Angel Olsen

“I dare you to understand,” Angel Olsen belts to the heavens above on My Woman, “what makes me a woman.” The singer-songwriter effectively lays out those characteristics in narrative and sonic form throughout her breakthrough record. Ranked among the “Best Albums of 2016” by Pitchfork, NPR, NME, Mojo, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and other respected outlets, My Woman is an emotionally bracing exploration of identity, love, and hope seen through the lens of one of the leading voices of her generation.

Sourced from the original masters, housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, and strictly limited to 2,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s 10th anniversary 180g 33RPM LP reissue presents My Woman in audiophile-grade sound for the first time. Olsen’s transfixing singing and gorgeous tones can now be heard with striking clarity and openness. The quiet surfaces and groove definition of the vinyl, carefully pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, also greatly improve upon the quality afforded by prior editions.

Primarily recorded live at Vox Studios in Los Angeles, My Woman gets the treatment it deserves. That extends to aspects such as instrumental separation, natural presence, and discernible imaging — all of which enhance the expansive beauty of Olsen’s work. Her songs teem with atmosphere and detail. Her voice communicates with words but just as much, if not more so, with nuance. Olsen shivers, shakes, trills, aches, stammers, moans, pouts, murmurs, pleads, whispers, all expressive devices that come across here with richness, texture, and immediacy. Her backing band, too, paints with a mix of suggestiveness and directness that emerges with newfound focus and stability.

Loosely divided by Olsen into halves, the first upbeat and the second contemplative, My Woman finds the St. Louis native breaking free of the ruminative folk and vintage-based flavors she pursued on her first two efforts. The 10-track set covers a spectrum of styles ranging from synthpop to chamber, country-western to crunchy rock ‘n’ roll, torch balladry to jangle pop. Her lyrics and arrangements showcase seamless symmetry and moody diversity, and signal an era-independent timelessness that couches them as both contemporary and classic.

My Woman wears many of its key influences — Stevie Nicks, Nancy Sinatra, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, The Ronettes, even a nod to Mudhoney — on its proverbial sleeve. Yet, in every regard, it announces Olsen as a formidable original graced with pipes, phrasing, and timing that would be the envy of any vocalist. Her knack for when and where to place hooks, and how to draw out melodies, proves equally sharp. As is her sense for drama and dynamics.

Initially hesitant, then hissing words with resolute determination, Shut Up Kiss Me stomps and storms, Olsen riding a pouncing rhythm before emerging from the turbulence with a burst of wordless cries that carry the song to its finish. She slides between highs and lows, then back again, on the strutting Never Be Mine, revealing a faint Southern twang as she conveys unrequited affectation without the protection of a mask. Longing also informs the garage-rock feel of Give It Up, Olsen surrounding herself with raw energy and swaying bass lines.

The singer exits the album in contemplative fashion, with the desert-country dreamscapes and falsetto regions of Heart Shaped Face beginning a stretch of songs that arrest with calm, delicacy, and ghostliness. Heed the tempered joy and yearning of the epic Sister. The jazzy shimmer of Those Were the Days, on which Olsen goes to the top of her considerable range amid a cabaret-leaning tune that evokes the hug of a cozy blanket. Or the haze of the vulnerable Woman, the singer navigating romantic labyrinths as fuzz-treated guitars bloom around her.

No wonder that, by the time she reaches the climactic Pops, a break-up song disguised as a dedication, Olsen sounds on the verge of collapse: torn, frayed, shredded.