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Aug 28, 2020Whole New Mess has a lot to carry on its shoulders – and carry it, it does. This is a superb album, and a more than worthy companion to its sister.
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Aug 27, 2020Managing to be uniquely stylized and engrossing while stripped bare, Whole New Mess not only works in isolation, it deserves equal footing in Olsen's discography.
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Aug 28, 2020Although simplistic in delivery, Whole New Mess feels like you’re eavesdropping on catharsis, crouched on the ground, with an ear to a door—so close you can hear her Olsen breathing between phrases. But soon enough she lets you in, holding your hand, as you both sort through the pain.
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Aug 28, 2020Reinterpreting and rearranging a series of older songs with new tones and styles — especially songs off of an album widely acclaimed for its tone and style — is a vision that not everybody could pull off, but Olsen does.
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Sep 1, 2020Whole New Mess has a singular power. The songs are spare but still feel electric, and despite their lower volume compared to All Mirrors, you couldn’t necessarily call them quiet. Their slow-strummed chords and finger-picked patterns are at times deliberately brittle and blown-out. Whole New Mess amplifies a different source of loudness.
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Aug 31, 2020It’s a record of personal growth in its most authentic form. It’s nice to finally hear the whole story.
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Aug 28, 2020Giving both of these records some distance allows for the songs to have breathing room, and for Whole New Mess to stand on its own.
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Aug 27, 2020If ‘All Mirrors’ took you to a lavish, creaky ballroom, then ‘Whole New Mess’ tucks you away in the cupboard under the stairs, the door slammed tightly shut.
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MojoAug 25, 2020Well-served by the sparse guitar-and-vocal arrangements and intimate, reverb-y ambience. [Oct 2020, p.84]
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UncutAug 25, 2020They have the grit and immediacy of demos, but Whole New Mess sounds just as powerful and just as finished as its more polished predecessor, like we're hearing Olsen work through her ache and confusion in real time. [Oct 2020, p.34]
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Aug 25, 2020Where All Mirrors pushed at the sky, Whole New Mess explores the vastness of the mind and peculiarities of the heart. It may take repeat listens to hear these roughly hewn songs as more than demos for their gilded twins, but once you've waded deep enough into the record's shifting, disintegrating twilight, it becomes something wholly new.
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Aug 25, 2020Working versions under soon-to-be-changed titles, these sparse arrangements are more than just sketched outlines. Stripped down to their rawest nerve, unfiltered yet purified - they transport us straight to the feeling.
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Aug 27, 2020With these two albums [All Mirrors and Whole New Mess] she’s proven the vast range of her songwriting, and that she could go just about anywhere with what she does next.
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Sep 24, 2020No one would call this a pretty album. It's much too stark. But something is riveting about the way Olsen coos to herself that's soft and comforting.
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Aug 25, 2020While Whole New Mess may not be the same grand statement as All Mirrors, it also isn’t trying to be. Even when playing the same songs, Olsen’s performance alone leans into different emotional textures than the music she plays with her full band, and though this may not be the finest example of her solo work, it remains a distinct testament to the stylistic range of one of today’s most compelling singer/songwriters.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 23 out of 27
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Mixed: 3 out of 27
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Negative: 1 out of 27
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Aug 28, 2020Phases meets All Mirrors, this is the rough idea that Olsen's makes real this time. Un álbum indie tan exquisito como una melodía celestial.
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Aug 30, 2020It is very simple but perfect, in this album there is nothing to spare, it is very similar to All Mirrors but very different
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Aug 28, 2020