#maxim ludwig

The short of it is that Olsen’s given the front half of the comp to artists she’s attracted to her orbit; the back half is her covering each of these artists. Considering she’s been based in North Carolina for several years at this point, it’s curious that the comp doesn’t feature any artists from the Asheville area, instead comprising Poppy Jean Crawford, Coffin Prick, Sarah Grace White and Maxim Ludwig, who are all from Los Angeles, and Camp Saint Helene as the lone holdout from Catskill, New York. Despite the geographic imbalance, however, the spiritual fabric of the musicians remains consistent.

Let’s start with the back half since there is less to say about what Angel does with the covers. Olsen tackles the EP title-tracks from Crawford’s undeniably catchy The Takeover and White’s Sinkhole; the concluding cut from Coffin Prick’s album Laughing; Ludwig’s “Born Too Blue,” originally out way back in 2012; and “Farfisa Song” from Camp Saint Helene’s debut Mother. In each case, the covers are reverent but spartan — there are no radical reinventions or compositional experiments here. Instead, Angel strips any excess away to deliver a handful of covers that foreground what has always been her most alluring talent, that singular voice, accompanied only by guitar or piano (“Sinkhole”). In both cases, she tweaks the reverb and mic effects, but there’s only one person any of these songs could’ve come from.

The front half is where the diversity happens, but for an album entitled Cosmic Waves, nobody must’ve told Crawford the mood would be more subdued. What we get from her is “Glamorous,” one of the most arresting songs in her discography and a screaming rocker that recalls no less than Hole, Cable Ties, Scanners or Savages (and it won’t surprise you to learn she recently opened for Placebo); it’s an astonishing opener made all the more so because nothing after it even remotely shoots for the rafters. Instead, you get Coffin Prick’s edgy, eye-shifting funk with “Blood”; White’s “Ride” perhaps most closely echoes Olsen’s early, more hauntingly isolated releases; Ludwig (here credited without early backing band The Santa Fe Seven or the more recent Mystics) doing a kind of Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson — or, let’s be realer, Five for Fighting — piano ballad on “Make Believe You Love Me”; and Camp Saint Helene’s full-band soft touch on “Wonder Now,” which to me gets closest not only to an Angel Olsen imitation but also to the ethos of the compilation’s title.

In each of these songs, though, you can see where the artists overlap with Olsen. The angst of “Glamorous” goes hand in hand with any number of Angel’s most cathartic moments; “Blood” would fit right in on Aisles; “Make Believe You Love Me” could easily be a demo from as far back as Burn Your Fire for No Witness; and “Ride and “Wonder Now” could work just about anywhere across her discography. I’ve seen some chatter suggesting this compilation is a way for Angel Olsen to buy herself some time before her next grand move, but that’s selling short both her and the small cadre of artists she’s got here; if anything, it should be an auspicious calling card for whatever’s to come from Somethingcosmic.