Metascore
84

Universal acclaim - based on 36 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 35 out of 36
  2. Negative: 0 out of 36
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  1. Mar 11, 2014
    96
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness’ eleven songs benefit greatly from the heightened sense of clarity afforded by the more spacious arrangements.
  2. Feb 19, 2014
    93
    Olsen shares graciously in her music, and if you are willing, Burn a Fire for No Witness will change your world. Or, actually, it will change how you see your world.
  3. Feb 14, 2014
    91
    With the stunning Burn Your Fire For No Witness, she deftly captures the terrifying dread of being in limbo, stuck in the sludge of a transitional period. But even with the existential doubt, the loneliness, and the angst, there’s still a resilient beacon of hope.
  4. 90
    Burn is her first album recorded with a full band, though the resultant fuzzily glam swagger doesn’t forsake her wise style, instead coming off like Bill Callahan covering T Rex.
  5. Feb 12, 2014
    90
    Burn Your Fire, through increased complexity of instrumentation, creates a new dynamic--the vocal is more understated and reserved, less elusive and divergent --it's autonomy partially tethered by the whole ensembles balanced interrelation.
  6. Mar 12, 2014
    89
    Olsen transcends ephemeral charm at every turn.
  7. 85
    Olsen is a unique songwriter of incredible complexity and fearlessness, and despite her ostensibly considerable inner sorrow, she manages to deliver an album that is as equally exultant as it is despondent.
  8. Feb 18, 2014
    83
    Angel Olsen's volatile voice lends an undercurrent of real, immediate danger to the early garage-rock throwbacks of Burn Your Fire For No Witness.
  9. Feb 18, 2014
    83
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness conjures the past without ever imitating it, swirling its influences into something intimate, impressionistic and new.
  10. Jul 28, 2014
    80
    Burn Your Fire stands against records that damage and internalise by sticking to their convictions, instead of meta-analysing and working out where the lines are drawn.
  11. Magnet
    Feb 21, 2014
    80
    Ultimately, Olsen shows she can still be gripping, but with a much greater sense of presence. [No. 106, p.57]
  12. Feb 19, 2014
    80
    She spends this excellent album distorting and blowing out those folk textures, sometimes with control of aural space, sometimes with thick and tangles musical arrangements. The breadth of sounds here now matches the hairpin turns her voice can take, and these songs take full advantage of these new musical roads.
  13. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    Her band’s arrangements are deliberately scrappy, but keyboards or guitars surge in whenever she needs them.... She has stripped away both sweetness and protection so that her songs grow even spookier.
  14. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    ["Windows"] sort of upends the rest of Burn Your Fire, an otherwise intensely focused record that sounds like it was written and sung through clenched teeth.
  15. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    She still sings prettily, and can prove it when doubted, but Olsen is more than willing to ugly it up so her songs can speak for themselves. [Feb/Mar 2014, p.74]
  16. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    Burn Your Fire For No Witness is a mutual journey in every sense of the term, the signpost of a brave new artist right on the cusp of greatness.
  17. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    In spite of its gloomier mood, it’s a record every bit as spirited as Half Way Home, and possibly even more affecting.
  18. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    Burn Your Fire is a minefield in the best possible way, studded even in its quietest moments with subterranean threat.
  19. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    There is a lot of heartbreak on Burn Your Fire For No Witness, as well as a lot of pleasing anachronism; a lot of hard-won resignation and what you might call stern vulnerability, a quality that Olsen shares with Joni Mitchell without sounding at all like Mitchell.
  20. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    There isn’t a misstep to be found here. There are a couple moments that veer close to an overly-maudlin tone (namely when the piano shows up on the sixth and final tracks), but this tone is just part of the strange alchemy of traditional singer-songwriterisms and fumbling tremulousness that make these 45 minutes so curious.
  21. Feb 18, 2014
    80
    The album seamlessly strolls from soaring numbers like "Lights Out" into a more stripped-down second half before ending with the gorgeous and inspired "Windows."
  22. Q Magazine
    Feb 14, 2014
    80
    [Olsen treats] heavy weather with an impressive lightness of touch. [Mar 2014, p.117]
  23. Feb 14, 2014
    80
    Progression is a great thing to hear in any artist's work, and there's plenty of that to the largely excellent Burn Your Fire. Yet its louder moments at the minute seem mostly in place to provide contrast, with Olsen remaining at her most engaging when speaking to you in whispers.
  24. Feb 13, 2014
    80
    Angel Olsen's second album marries solo singer-songwriter stuff with buzzy, fuzzy alt-pop--alternating between one and the other so expertly that the strengths of both are highlighted, the weaknesses pushed deep into the background.
  25. Feb 13, 2014
    80
    The sum is a subtly powerful lo-fi indie rock record produced by John Congleton, who’s proved capable with other bands (Okkervil River, Modest Mouse) of making the production as emotionally intense as the soul-baring songwriting.
  26. Uncut
    Feb 12, 2014
    80
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness feels like a big step forward from its predecessor, Half Way Home. [Mar 2014, p.81]
  27. Mojo
    Feb 12, 2014
    80
    This superb second album does indeed make a dramatic leap forward. [Mar 2014, p.90]
  28. Feb 12, 2014
    80
    Always vivid and often affecting, the record deals with love and loss in a way that constantly resonates.
  29. Feb 12, 2014
    80
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness is noisier, brasher, and more confident than its languid predecessor.
  30. Feb 21, 2014
    78
    Within the 11 tracks that make up her third full-length, Olsen’s strong and matchless voice pierces through fuzzed out guitars and massive organ riffs, allowing us to burrow into her mind.
  31. Feb 18, 2014
    75
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness boasts an even more robust presence [as her 2012 debut, "Half Way Home"], thanks to production by John Congleton.
  32. 75
    For as commanding and affecting Burn Your Fire for No Witness can be while it plays, the album remains elusive when trying to call it to mind later.
  33. Feb 21, 2014
    70
    When she depletes her stock of declarative phrases, Olsen has little to say about these mercurial emotional swings except that she's feeling them. Or unprepared to commit to them. Still, the good songs on Burn Your Fire for No Witness suggest Olsen is figuring out how to sound--how to resound, actually.
  34. 70
    For those prepared to hunker down and get immersed in Angel Olsen’s laconic, often downbeat echoes on depressing life events many of us have experienced, it’s a startlingly uncompromising, if occasionally uncomfortable peek into her haunted dreams.
  35. Feb 12, 2014
    70
    It’s Olsen’s willingness to develop her sound that is really the most gratifying aspect of Burn Your Fire For No Witness, enticingly hinting at much more to come in the future.
  36. Feb 18, 2014
    60
    It's a balanced album by a spirit who seems anything but.
User Score
8.3

Universal acclaim- based on 89 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 83 out of 89
  2. Negative: 2 out of 89
  1. Feb 20, 2014
    9
    Angel Olsen , presents an incredible journey to the melancholy and the loneliness , this excellent album has a compendium of songs that areAngel Olsen , presents an incredible journey to the melancholy and the loneliness , this excellent album has a compendium of songs that are rich in lyricism and faithful in music, his truly talent confirms that she is not only a ordinary folk girl , is a powerful woman. Full Review »
  2. Oct 22, 2022
    7
    Angel Olsen, was soll ich sagen, dieses Frauchen hat es mir auch angetan. Eine sehr liebe, melancholische Stimme, traurig, stark und treu, manAngel Olsen, was soll ich sagen, dieses Frauchen hat es mir auch angetan. Eine sehr liebe, melancholische Stimme, traurig, stark und treu, man möchte spuren. Full Review »
  3. Oct 9, 2022
    0
    Angel Olsen really outdid herself with Burn Your Fire for No Witness. One of my favorite albums for sure.