Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us. Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen’s Big Time were forged in such a whiplash.
Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen’s process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she’d been avoiding for some time. “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me,” she said. Three days later, her father died and shortly after her mother passed away. The shards of this grief—the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully by her parents— are scattered throughout the album.
Three weeks after her mother’s funeral she was in the studio, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album. Loss has long been a subject of Olsen’s elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she. If that bursting-at-the-seams, running downhill energy has come to seem intractable to her work, this album proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She’s working with an elastic, expansive mastery of her voice—both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.

《胡同》的故事慢慢讲 总有人等在回家的路口
《胡同》，是2017年《明日之子》舞台上的《南一道街》最初的名字，在2019年的最后一天，毛不易要还它以这初姓名，就像这张专辑里的小王一样，回归初心的模样。《胡同》描写的是毛不易小时候生活过的街巷，那是小小王的生活记忆，也是每个人午夜梦回的，那个叫作故土的地方。毛不易觉得，在奔向新年新生活的时候，更要温习一下梦想的初衷和出发的地方。一年又一年，人生路慢慢走，故事慢慢讲，在那里，总有人等在你回家的路口。
制作人回忆起当初在第一次听到《胡同》这首歌的时候，再次被毛不易的歌词所描述的场景所吸引，平静、平淡的画面里，其实蕴含着深意，有着不一样的情怀和情绪。这种有一点遗憾又对未来生活有着憧憬的情绪，每个人都可以有自己的解读。人人都是小王。制作人在编曲制作的时候让吉他、黑管和大提琴融合在一起，这些经常在毛不易的作品中出现的音乐元素，让音乐画面保持一种自然舒服的状态。而这样舒适恬淡的表达，也是毛不易的音乐匠心，也是这首歌吸引人的最关键的特质。

Joshua Hyslop is a modern folk musician, an amalgam of influence in the classically romantic tradition of Damien Rice, Ryan Adams, Iron and Wine, and Sufjan Stevens. Like the said ballyhooed folksters before him, Joshua is inspired to write largely as a result of the people and relationships surrounding him, while also subjecting his songs to his own vulnerabilities, doubts, and conflicts. He integrates these revelations with his agenda of lyrical candidness, creating an expressive and open artform.