My Woman is the sound of Angel Olsen making her best album to date. It’s the sound of an artist who has drawn on the history and traditions of American pop music, and yet come up with something new that is by turns funny, striking, and electrifying. It’s also the sound of one of the best albums of the year.

We should have known something was up with ‘Shut Up Kiss Me’, one of the first songs to be released from the album. While Olsen’s previous album, 2014’s Burn Your Fire for No Witness, was met with widespread acclaim, it was acclaim from the kind of people who listen to Angel Olsen albums. Yet ‘Shut Up Kiss Me’ suggested something different. The punchiest and most accessible song Olsen has released, it knowingly plays around with what we might expect from a song of that title. Despite hysterical backing vocals kicking in half way through, the narrator of this song is not someone hopelessly and helplessly in love. Rather, the smirking delivery and sharp lyrics suggest that she knows exactly what she’s doing.

Maybe it’s the fact that Olsen now lives in Asheville, North Carolina, a liberal oasis in a Sahara of conservatism. Her new home seems to be imbued in the record: Olsen is as witty and clever as any singer-songwriter, but there’s a real sense of affection for the musical traditions of the country. Both ‘Never Be Mine’ and (the surely Nirvana-referencing) ‘Heart Shaped Face’ channel a folk-esque fragility in the voice, well-suited to the complex mixture of insecurity and defiance that the songs convey.

My Woman also sees Olsen at her most ambitious, with the second side taking a turn for the epic. The approach yields its best results on ‘Sister’, which finds Olsen doing a Stevie Nicks impression. Yet what starts out as a pleasing enough, if a little derivative, shuffle becomes an entirely different beast as the refrain of “all my life I’d thought I’d change” is sung. Shifting from wistful to angry to devastating, Olsen and the guitar freak-out that follows transform the song. ‘Woman’ takes on a similar tone, with the listener being fiercely challenged to “understand what makes me a woman”. Such is the ferocity of her voice, it would be a brave person who tried to do so.

Perhaps the most striking song on the album, however, is its closer, ‘Pops’. Featuring only piano and Olsen’s voice unusually high up in the mix, its rawness stands in particular contrast to the preceding forty-five minutes. Yet it’s this willingness to go downs avenues unexpected, and to marry classic songwriting with playfulness, that elevates Olsen above a bog-standard writer merely reheating the canon. We should treasure a record this clever, yet so plainly enjoyable.