When: 7.30pm on Tuesday 29 August 2023
Where: Leeds Irish Centre, York Road, Leeds LS9 9NT

PLEASE NOTE: This show has now sold out! Watch this space for details of future Angel Olsen shows in the North.

We’re pleased to be welcoming Angel Olsen back to Leeds!

Last year’s Big Time brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered a beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realisation that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it, and Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen’s words, ‘in search of something else’.

‘I was somewhere travelling,’ says Olsen, ‘stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking “what does ‘forever’ really mean? What are the things I’m seeking in friendship or love, and how can ‘forever’ be attainable if we’re always changing?”‘ Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realised ‘maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you’re finished learning or exploring.’

‘”Forever”‘, says Olsen, ‘remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest.’ And so it is with opener Nothing’s Free, 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’. It is as hypnotic and haunting as anything Olsen has ever written, backed by a sax and organ pairing that feel wholly new to her canon. Holding On stretches that endless curiosity even further, as Olsen leans into a song that is ‘rare in my music, not meant for singing, more for getting lost in’.

All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise Forever Means, songs from Olsen’s roads travelled and the ones ahead. ‘Nothing’s free / like breaking free,’ Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.

Tour support comes from King Tuff. There are times in our life when we feel magic in the air. When new love arrives, or we find ourselves lost in a moment of creation with others who share our vision. A sense that: this is who I want to be. This is what I want to share. It’s a fleeting feeling and one that Kyle Thomas, the singer-songwriter who records and performs as King Tuff, found himself longing for in the spring of 2020.

But knowing he couldn’t simply recreate this time in his life at will, Thomas – who hails from Brattleboro, Vermont – set out to write a love letter to those cherished moments of inspiration and to the small town that formed him. The one where he first nurtured his songwriting impulses, bouncing ideas off other like-minded artists. The kind of place where the changing of the seasons always delivered a sense of perspective and fresh artistic inspiration. Where he felt a deeper connection with nature and sense of community that had once been so close at hand.

This show is a co-promotion with Brudenell Presents and Now Wave.

Book tickets now. 

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