The Singles Jukebox

Monday night, skate night…

[Video][Website]
[6.78]

Claire Biddles: Have you ever needed someone so desperately and so immediately that the words you’re speaking aren’t immediate enough, everything you say is shorthand, everything comes out as platitudes and clichés but you mean it, you mean it so much that time reverses itself and language is erased and when you beg that person to kiss you, to hold you, the words are being said for the first time, willed into being by the this thing inside you, this breathless want? I have.
[9]

Hannah Jocelyn: There’s a moment in the first verse of this song, around 18 seconds in, where Angel takes a breath, as if about to explode into a chorus… and then she just keeps going with a second verse. When she finally does reach that chorus, it doesn’t explode but becomes something more low-key and altogether a different, stranger song. The delivery isn’t low-key at all, though, and the refrain of “shutupkissmeholdmetiiight” is instantly as memorable as “are you lonely too? Hi-five! So am I!” from the last album. She doesn’t sound lonely here though. Instead, she’s having fun, expanding and evolving the deadpan delivery of that other song.
[9]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: I’ve always loved Angel Olsen’s unadorned displays of emotion, even when they’re a bit obscured by a subtle layer of murk in her acoustic tracks, but “Shut Up Kiss Me” is Olsen at her most in-your-face, channeling her inner glam-rock diva. The bar-band backing makes me want to listen to this in an 8-track player, and her plea for a second shot at love feels specially poignant in that chord change (G to E-major) in the chorus. It accentuates the desperation perfectly. Now go kiss her, you moron!
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: I want to wear “Shut Up Kiss Me Hold Me Tight” as a T-shirt in hope of claiming even an ounce of Angel Olsen’s fearless cool. “Forgiven/Forgotten” also tumbled out of the wild like a rolling stone, but it didn’t yank the collars of bystanders as intensely as this. The guitar struts with glamor; the drums stomp on the beat as if to shake out all the nonsense. If she seemed reserved and distant in Burn Your Fire for No Witness, you cannot accuse her of beating around the bush in “Shut Up Kiss Me.”
[8]

Katie Gill: Discount Gwen Stefani in a Party City wig! Thankfully, Gwen isn’t as prolific as mondegreens as Angel Olsen it. The song loses a bit if you have to pause and look up the lyrics because surely she can’t be singing “shut up, kiss me, hold retard.” Thankfully she isn’t.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Her 2014 album moribund whenever she accepted folk conventions, Angel Olsen is a different creature when she yields to her inner Daniel Johnston; even the title of this track owes something to, I dunno, Shania Twain, and thank goodness. She can use a tougher rhythm section — hell, use a rhythm section — but insouciance suits her.
[6]

Brad Shoup: The structure is like a doo-wop song bludgeoned in a dark corner; she sings it like an avenging Loretta Lynn. Olsen overloads her voice and dials everything else back; the devotion she depicts ends up like an optical illustion.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Also not that infinitely covered Peiken/Shanks track, but an indie track that can’t decide whether it’d rather be spiky or lo-fi, acoustic or garage-rock. I’d prefer the former; the chorus prefers the latter.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: Dry and brittle, Angel Olsen’s new single is, as its title might suggest, more insistent than seductive. I don’t hear a lot of desire, either: just flailing. Yes, that’s likely the point, but I’m used to her making hers with more shade.
[5]