In first speaking about these songs, Olsen said, "It feels like part of my writing has come back from the past, and another part of it was waiting to exist." If Whole New Mess holds the truths of Olsen’s enduring self, and All Mirrors documents her ascent toward a new future, Songs of the Lark… And Other Far Memories exists out of time, capturing the whole artist beyond this one sound, or that one recording, or any one idea. It is a definitive collection, not just of these songs but of their revelations and their writer, from their simplest origins to their mightiest realizations.