Deep Cuts - Angel Olsen, "Chance"

After years of paying her dues in the indie-folk circuit, Angel Olsen blossomed into something else with 2019’s All Mirrors. For her fourth studio album, Olsen garnished her homespun lyrics and yearning vocals with an orchestral soundscape. The front half of the album very much melds these elements together - opener and second single “Lark” still revolves around strummy guitars, the violins only becoming central as the song climaxes. However, by the time you reach album closer (and today’s featured song) “Chance,” any and all rustic features are abandoned for a grandiose arrangement of pianos and strings.

“Chance” starts off by highlighting Angel Olsen’s stunning, aching vocals. “What is it you think I need?” she sings, her voice echoing through the parlor. It’s a callback to “Give It Up,” a track off 2016’s phenomenal MY WOMAN about clinging to a love that is falling apart. “Chance” operates as a sort of sequel, with the narrator no longer willing to fight for the relationship in question. Brilliantly, Olsen chooses to tell this story against a backdrop straight out of an Old Hollywood film. She leans into a boozy, loungy vocal style that suggests both a deep exhaustion and a mysterious allure. When she croons "I know how it all comes back/ I know too well," you can practically smell the cigarette haze looming over the stage in the dimly-lit 1950s Los Angeles jazz club where this performance is surely taking place. 

Halfway through the first verse, as she sings “I’m leaving once again,” the instrumental sparkles to life: drums enter, the strings lift off, and the piano starts climbing the scales. She glamorously lowers her register for the second verse: “I’m walking through the scenes / I’m saying all the lines / I wish I could un-see some things that gave me life.” Olsen is done trying, done rehashing the same arguments, done with even the positive memories that are keeping her around in what is ultimately an unfulfilling relationship.

In the final refrain, Olsen pleads with her soon-to-be-ex-lover to try and be present with her: “Why don’t you say you’re with me now with all your heart?” she sobs. The final minute is an instrumental coda as credits roll on their relationship, and on All Mirrors. Angel Olsen has always had a retro sound, and has always done a fantastic job at conveying how heartbreak feels. But with All Mirrors, and perhaps best of all on “Chance,” she traded the humble, pastoral sounds of her early career for a lush and stunningly beautiful world. Even as she’s further expanded her artistry in the 2020’s, “Chance” very much remains Olsen’s most cinematic and quite possibly most heart-aching moment yet.