When: 7.30pm on Monday 22 September 2014
Where: The Brudenell Social Club, 33 Queen’s Road, Headingley, Leeds LS6 1NY

When: 7.30pm on Tuesday 23 September 2014
Where: Gorilla, 54-56 Whitworth Street West, Manchester M1 5WW

PLEASE NOTE: Due to exceptional demand, the Manchester show has been upgraded to Gorilla, the Deaf Institute’s sister venue on Whitworth Street West. All original tickets remain valid, and all other show details remain the same.

Following her sold-out show in March, we’re delighted to be welcoming back with Jagjaguwar’s Angel Olsen in September – for shows in both Manchester and Leeds.

Many of the superlatives describing Angel Olsen refer to how seemingly little it takes for her to leave an audience speechless, even spellbound. But Olsen has never been as timid as those descriptors imply, and the noisy, fiery hints in her earlier work find a fuller expression on her newest LP, Burn Your Fire For No Witness. Here, Olsen sings with full-throated exultation, admonition and bold, expressive melody. Also, with the help of producer John Congleton, her music now crackles with a churning, rumbling low end and a brighter energy.

Angel Olsen began singing as a young girl in St. Louis, where she explored the remarkable range of her voice and the places it could take her songwriting. Her self-released debut EP,Strange Cacti, belied both that early period of discovery and her Midwestern roots. Cautious and homespun on the one hand, the EP transported us to a mystical, unrecognisable world on the other, and it garnered extensive praise for its enigmatic beauty. Olsen then went further on Half Way Home, her first full-length album (released on Bathetic Records), which mined essential themes while showcasing a more developed voice. Olsen dared to be more personal.

After extensive touring, Olsen eventually settled for a time in Chicago’s Logan Square neighbourhood, where she created ‘a collection of songs grown in a year of heartbreak, travel and transformation’. The new songs go on to tell us to leave, or to high-five a lover who is lacking, or to dance our way up and out of sorrow. Many of them also remain essentially unchanged from their bare beginnings. In leaving them so intact, a more self-assured Olsen is opening up to us, allowing us to be in the room with her at the very genesis of these songs, when the thread of creation is most vulnerable and least filtered. Our reward for entering this room are many head-turning moments and the powerful, unsettling recognition of ourselves in the weave of her songs.

This act of meaning-making recurs as a theme throughout the album, as the sublimating response to the power of negativity. In the song, Stars, for example, Olsen wishes to ‘have the voice of everything’ and in a moment of hatefulness and hurt realises that the strength of fury results in the power she had been seeking all along. Thankfully for us, Olsen has decided to channel a lot of this newfound power into the ethereal, hypnotic performances of her new and revealing songs, sharing with us the full grace and beauty of her transformative moments.

Main support in Manchester and Leeds comes from Rodrigo Amarante. Amarante is a songwriter and multi-intrumentalist who has made an international name with his band Little Joy (alongside The Strokes’ drummer Fab Moretti and Binki Shapiro), and by recording and playing with Devendra Banhart on his last three albums. What you might not know is that Amarante is an inescapable figure in Brazilian music and has influenced a whole generation in his homeland. He is one of the masterminds of the band Los Hermanos and a founding member of samba supergroup Orquestra Imperial alongside Seu Jorge and Moreno Veloso. He has recorded and performed with Brazilian icons such as Tom Zé, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso and was elected one of the 100 best musicians in Brazilian history by Rolling Stone Magazine. After the last five years of voluntary exile in the US, he has now made his first solo album entitled Cavalo, which was released in May.

Opening in Manchester is Ryley Walker, a 24 year-old singer/songwriter and guitarist from Chicago. Walker recently turned to his folk-rock sound, inspired by some of his heroes Bert Jansch, Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin. After kicking around Chicago’s experimental free/noise music scene and touring extensively, he grew into his current laid-back and folk-driven approach to tunes, resulting in several cassettes, singles – and a highly acclaimed EP The West Wind. His poised and accomplished debut LP, All Kinds Of You, was released in April on the seminal Tompkins Square label.

LEEDS: Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from the bar, Crash Records, Jumbo Records, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

MANCHESTER: Due to exceptional demand, the Manchester show has been upgraded to Gorilla, the Deaf Institute’s sister venue on Whitworth Street West. All original tickets remain valid, and all other show details remain the same.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from the bar, Common (both no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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