Details

Second show announced due to popular demand!

A heart-rending chronicle of profound grief and unexpected new love.

Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us. Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen’s 2022 release Big Time were forged in such a whiplash.

Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen’s process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she’d been avoiding for some time. Three days later, her father died; his funeral became the occasion for Olsen to introduce her partner to her family. Though she was fearful their presence as a newly out queer couple would be ‘an additional symbol of loss,’ those days went peacefully, yet only two weeks later Olsen got the call that her mother was in the ER. Hospice came soon after, and a second funeral came quickly on the heels of the first. Three weeks after her mother’s funeral she was on a plane to Los Angeles to spend a month in Topanga Canyon, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album.

Loss has long been a subject of Olsen’s elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come. Darkness inherently suggests depth, but it takes a much wiser writer to find meaning and complexity in the luminous place that Big Time occupies.

‘You can’t plan grief, you can’t organise it or schedule it or know how you’ll feel when it comes. It just happens, and when it does sometimes it’s not what you thought it would be.’ Angel Olsen

With Special Guests

Angel Olsen will be supported by Marty Frawley Wednesday 1 March
and Annie Rose Maloney Friday 3 March.

Pre-Show Entertainment

From 6pm-9pm, grab a drink and enjoy sounds from College of Knowledge on the Centre’s Outdoor Forecourt.

COVID Safety

Melbourne Recital Centre is committed to the safety of our artists, staff and patrons. A range of public health, hygiene and physical distancing measures are currently in place. Click here to learn more.

Artists & Set Times

Artists

Angel Olsen
Martin Frawley
Annie Rose Maloney

Set Times

Wednsday 1 March
7.30pm – 8pm: Martin Frawley
8pm – 8.30pm: Interval
8.30pm – 10pm: Angel Olsen

Friday 3 March
7.30pm – 8pm: Annie Rose Maloney
8pm – 8.30pm: Interval
8.30pm – 10pm: Angel Olsen