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Oct 29, 2019Olsen, her arrangers and producer (The Paper Chase‘s John Congleton) have created an album that simply bulges with perfection and timeless songs.
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Oct 4, 2019Her sad-girl persona, thrust upon her unwittingly by music media, transforms into its most dramatic form. It’s a brazen sadness echoed through crashing symbols and spacious synths. The songs are devastating, but also nourishing: it’s a whole new version of Olsen.
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Oct 3, 2019Ultimately this record – her best yet – is about finding a different kind of love: the quiet self-examination after the dust of a break-up finally settles.
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Oct 2, 2019All Mirrors is a successful example of how being bold and staying true to yourself pays off. Undeniably, this is Olsen’s most cohesive, self-aware, and searing album to date, and the era of Olsen is far from finished.
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Oct 1, 2019Her newfound embrace of violins, violas and cellos elevates her shadowy, often synth-infused rock to extraordinarily goosebump-inducing heights, making All Mirrors her third consecutive (and likely best) masterpiece to date.
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Oct 4, 2019The end result is this towering, tempestuous album, where nearly every song has calms and storms matching Olsen’s soaring voice and intricate melodies.
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Oct 15, 2019Olsen has created an undeniable stunner that should go down as one of the strongest folk albums of the year.
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Oct 15, 2019All Mirrors belongs in the canon of essential break-up albums, but more Exile in Guyville than Rumours or Blue. ... The resulting instrumentation is impressively cohesive and resoundingly huge.
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Oct 4, 2019Though she may have initially built her reputation on stark and brittle atmospheres, it turns out that her trademark vulnerability is only elevated by these stirring, highly stylized interpretations, making it a risk that pays off in spades.
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Oct 2, 2019Rapturous. ... The album is an extended meditation on the vagaries of fortune through regeneration, but for the listener, the experience is pure bliss.
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Oct 2, 2019All Mirrors is challenging and confrontational, and rewards close, present listening.
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Oct 2, 2019Monumental and intimate in equal measure, All Mirrors' boldness is exceeded only by its profound emotional resonance. Angel Olsen's talents were always apparent. Here, they seem limitless.
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Oct 2, 2019Olsen’s up to something different here, inviting a different sort of attention to fully absorb. It’s worth the investment; the emotion’s as visceral as it is complex, and it ranks among the best sounding records this year, deserving to be cranked on a good sound system — an album to spend time with, to fall into, to shut up and let yourself be kissed by.
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Sep 30, 2019It’s all at once a whirlwind of colliding ideas both past and present, a bold stride into the future, a new sound pushed beyond expectation, an album that marks the passing of time and the changing of minds, a continued rebirth.
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Oct 4, 2019Olsen suggests that nihilism and optimism are closer than you think, that what feels like knowing yourself is almost always revealed as delusion. On All Mirrors, she glories in that tumult, and the sparks that fly illuminate her bravura turn.
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Oct 4, 2019Angel is unprepared to commit to anything in the long term, but is always fully committed to now, and this has allowed her to make her boldest and most purposeful step yet.
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Oct 14, 2019The one-time folkie’s fourth album exorcises romantic demons by taking another bold leap forward.
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Oct 4, 2019There is a true communion with the brimmed-over melodies and rhythms, but a desperation that seems to know solemn silence isn’t what’s left over. Often, the listen feels like an impossible reprieve in a crumbling structure, with a rich echo helping to sell you on your own resolve. Not unlike love itself, it is a riveting, wrenching, and absurdly rewarding experience.
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Oct 4, 2019Where Del Rey’s music feels icier to the touch and more pop-oriented, Olsen sings from the heart, reflected in the melancholic, often soaring, even experimental backing that hits home more than it misses. It may take some time and uninterrupted concentration, but the expansive All Mirrors grows on you with repeated plays.
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Oct 3, 2019It is rewarding: the sound of Angel Olsen skilfully mapping out an unanticipated new territory for herself, further out on the left-field. Nothing on All Mirrors ends up quite where you expect, including the artist who made it.
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Oct 3, 2019The result is a record as expansive as it is overwhelming.
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Q MagazineSep 30, 2019All Mirrors strikes an impressive balance between familiar and strange - resulting in an album that's startling and breathtakingly beautiful. [Nov 2019, p.109]
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UncutSep 30, 2019All Mirrors is her boldest reinvention yet. [Nov 2019, p.30]
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MojoSep 30, 2019Behind the parachute silk and dry ice, the smoke and mirrors, stands a record in high emotional definition, its outline becoming sharper by the second. [Nov 2019, p.92]
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Sep 30, 2019All Mirrors retains a good amount of iconic devastation. Olsen’s timeless, musing lyrics are wise as ever, if perhaps more cynical than before. Yet there is a new, almost paradoxical, quality to the sound, as though it comes both from the past and the future.
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Sep 30, 2019All Mirrors is a record that is so intuitive and interior, that it feels it could be difficult to penetrate - but it’s one hell of a prize if you give it the chance.
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Oct 4, 2019The music is gorgeous but feels labored over, like pottery lacquered with one too many layers of shellac. Hopefully Olsen will also still release her stripped-back take on All Mirrors, as it’s the dressing—not the songs themselves—that stumbles.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 220 out of 272
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Mixed: 6 out of 272
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Negative: 46 out of 272
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Oct 4, 2019
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Oct 4, 2019
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Oct 4, 2019Pretty shameful to see the swifties rating this masterpiece with a zero only because their fave can't do something like this