Was it your mother?

Discussing poetry is weird. If the correct way to read a poem is to experience it in it's full form, it feels false to build a conversation from it. It feels self-serving, inarticulate, and a little over-exposing. It feels like it should be left alone.

That being said, discussing poetry (or music, or art, or literature...) is a means of communication. If you have the ability to articulate the way a poem or song touches you, you are more connected to that poem or song. You are more connected to the speaker, the audience, and the person across the room. There is a lot of music out there, which is why we feel a specific closeness with people who share our taste in music, and why it's good to talk about it.

During her performance at Bowery Ballroom in New York, Angel Olsen tried out a new song that does not appear in any of her albums. She offers her perspective on someone she once felt close to. She uses the song as a departure from that person, but does a good job of avoiding a normal "break up" song. Although she connects herself to the situation, she doesn't bash the other person too badly, and she doesn't claim a victim's role. She uses the song for closure, and manages to keep her cool and stay true to her feelings at the same time. In the attached video, the audience's reactions to her emphasize her power in the room.

Angel Olsen knows the subject of the song very well, maybe even too well. She claims that she's seen them change over time, and wonders if she's been misread due to the limitations of the other person:

Was it me you were thinking of
all the times when you thought of me
was it your mother?
was it your shelter?
Was it another with a heart-shaped face?

These lines are both playful and real. "Was it your mother" not only gets a great reaction from the audience in the video, but it also pokes at gender roles, the binary between mothers and sons, and Freudian ideas about that binary. 'Heart-shaped face' not only refers to the actual shape of her face, but serves as a quirky alternative to the label of someone who "wears their heart on their sleeve." Later in the song, she continues to prove her closeness with this person by singing about the severity of their independence, and how it ends up isolating rather than liberating them:

You've never needed anyone
to expose you to the sun
you've never needed anyone
to raise your hell up outta your mind

The person doesn't need anyone to bring them joy or pain, because they produce both in extremes.
A multi-dimensional line from the song is

All the truth never really lies in a series of words we say

She plays on the solidity of the word 'truth' by including the word 'lies' in the same sentence, providing a nice contrast. 'Lies' also provides a visual foundation for the line, especially coupled with 'series' in reference to something that cannot be seen.