Talking to Angel Olsen, certain associations, many of them emotional, come up. There's the soul-wrenching, heart-ripping music, languid at times, intimate, or, to borrow an oft-used, perhaps overused word, “raw.” At other times, the music swells and crashes like a gathering wave. With these qualities in mind, and the way aspects of American culture frame and package female artists, the image of Olsen has often turned, through no fault of her own, on a kind of retrograde femininity, attributing a vulnerability that can feel like code for gendered fragility.
It's been said that Olsen is an old soul and though that description feels true—the way she takes unhurried time to answer a question, the elder musical and artistic references she makes, the lucidity with which she dissects past selves and…
