Despite her transition into the rock world, there’s enough of an acoustic element, a folksinger’s lilt and a songwriter’s focus on Angel Olsen’s latest album My Woman to make including it as our best folk album of the year a no-brainer. Today she’s released the video for “Pops,” the final song off her new album, and the one that I argued carries the most poignant message of the whole record. The clip is a somber one, matching the tone of the song, and was shot in Asheville where Olsen currently lives.
Olsen co-directed the video with Jethro Waters — actually, she directed every video for this album cycle — and this clip follows in a long line of studied, precise visuals that helped flesh out the world that she created on her fourth full-length record. In the clip Olsen wanders around Asheville with long shots of the city’s natural beauty and close-ups of her face, her playing piano, and her sitting still and alone in the darkness. It creates an intimate, simple world that is carried by the song’s somber piano melody. Watch the clip above and look for Olsen out on tour this year — her live show is one of the best I have ever seen, and I do this for a living.
