Angel Olsen released her latest album, All Mirrors, last year, which arrived three years after its predecessor, 2016’s My Woman. Olsen isn’t waiting that long between albums this time, though: Yesterday, she announced that her next album, Whole New Mess, will be out in a month. She also shared the title track, and she gave it its live debut on The Tonight Show yesterday.
Like Perfume Genius before her, Olsen played the song from an empty performance space. It was just her, a guitar, and a microphone on the stage, and the camera moved around the space to capture the performance in a single, lovely shot. Olsen began the stripped down tune, “Won’t be long now before it’s really showing / It’s every season where it is I’m going / I stretch my bones out on the floor / I think I’ll really do the change.”
When announcing the album, Olsen explained the inspiration behind it, saying, “I had gone through this breakup, but it was so much bigger than that — I’d lost friendships, too. When you get out of a relationship, you have to examine who you are or were in all the relationships. I wanted to record when I was still processing these feelings. These are the personal takes, encapsulated in a moment.”
Watch Olsen perform “Whole New Mess” above.
Whole New Mess is out 8/28 via Jagjaguwar. Pre-order it here.
