Forever Means Angel Olsen

Rebecca Varidel
11th Mar 2023

Angel Olsen this week announced her new EP out Friday 14 April on Jagjaguwar.

Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold a common theme: within the wisdom borne from the twin stars of grief and love comes the realization that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it.

Big Time, Angel Olsen’s stunning 2022 record, is “one big expanse, where the past and the future are knowable and deeply felt, fully enclosed in the moment” (Pitchfork). It brought Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before, and was deemed one of the year’s best releases by the likes of The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NPR and countless others. Olsen today announces Forever Means, her new EP out Friday, April 14 on Jagjaguwar, and presents its lead single / lyric video Nothing’s Free.

“Forever is to remain curious, never letting yourself think you're finished learning or exploring, while trying also to be kind and honest” Olsen says.

EP opener / lead single Nothing’s Free is a song that is, according to Olsen, “about that point when self-denial breaks, and you notice how long you’ve been restraining who you are.” On 'Nothing’s Free', Olsen exudes comfort with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable. “It felt really difficult to exclude it from Big Time,” she admits, “but it felt more soulful than the direction of that record, it was coming from a different place. For me, when I wrote it, I was coming to terms with my identity and sexuality. I was opening up in a new way.”

Photo credit Luke Rogers