“I quit my dreaming the moment that I found you/ I started dancing just to be around you/ Here’s to thinking that it all meant so much more/ I kept my mouth shut and opened up the door.” On the first lines of Burn Your Fire For No Witness, Angel Olsen lays out every theme she’ll explore over the next 45 minutes: finding happiness, hoping it’s more than it really is, and building up the agency and courage to be able to say that what you have isn’t good enough. Here, she discovers the power of her own voice, and her need to be heard burns with a white-hot intensity. “This would be so much easier if I had nothing more to say,” she sings on “High And Wild.” Olsen is through being walked over, and she won’t let herself be unhappy because of things left unsaid. Nowhere is this more apparent than on “White Fire,” the wordy and bone-rattling emotional centerpiece of the album. She blends dusty romanticism — “So I turned on a picture show/ I disappeared the lines” — with a propulsive desire for progress: “But I guess we’re always leaving even when we look the same/ And it eases me somehow to know that even this will change.” Later, she’ll command: “If you don’t feel good about it, then turn around/ If you really mean it, baby, stand your ground.” Olsen stands her ground on Burn Your Fire, refusing to compromise herself for others. It’s a spiritual record, one about finding your inner passion and never letting anyone dampen that. It burns in a satisfying way, like a hot poker that hurts like hell but leaves a lasting impression. –James [LISTEN]