Shortly before Sharon Van Etten’s new musical journey began, her husband, Zeke Hutchins, ironically asked her something like, “You’re in your 40s, and you’re starting a band—why?” and immediately got the answer: “I just want to play clubs!”
Of course, the real explanation is more complicated and painful. During a five-year abusive relationship in her youth, Van Etten had to hide her music practice from a boyfriend consumed by the green-eyed monster. Luckily, a deus ex machina, aka Nick Cave, emerged then, but the damage was already done, and for a long time after that trauma, she preferred to work all by herself. Fans know there have been no collaborations with other musicians since the beginning of her career. However, in 2020, something changed, and we saw beautiful link-ups with Norah Jones, Local Natives, Courtney Barnett, Angel Olsen, and other peers.
Having made an impressive run of three perfect consecutive records—Tramp, Are We There, and Remind Me Tomorrow—by the beginning of the current decade, Sharon Van Etten has become one of the most influential songwriters of modern times. Add to that her ongoing friendship with television and indie cinema as a composer/soundtrack contributor (Ted Lasso, Yellowjackets, Past Lives) and actress (Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The OA, Twin Peaks), and you’ll get a solid basis for a successful career with Taylor Swift-ish perspectives somewhere on the horizon. All Van Etten needed to do to elevate her impact on the industry was to continue working on her singer-songwriter brand. However, she took a different path.
In that year, 2020, when Sharon Van Etten emerged with numerous collaborations, she had a transformative experience of unprompted jamming with her session musicians—this led to the establishment of the Attachment Theory. “I try to do something different every time I make a record,” Van Etten says. Well, this time, she went much further—personally and professionally. “It took me a long time to even trust people to play in a band with me live, to feel that they had the best intentions to help me grow my sound,” she says. Forming a band and sharing creative responsibilities with others became a massive challenge for her. At the same time, her new sound is a crash test for longtime fans.
Gathering with her bandmates in a London church famous for recording Eurythmics‘ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Van Etten and her band created an utterly unexpected record. This eclectic collection of dark, gothic, and old-school tunes features a diverse array of music genres from the past, existing at the crossroads of glam rock, industrial, new wave, and post-punk.
She admits that Nine Inch Nails and Pylon were among their influences during the recording process, but there are many more—while listening to the record, dozens of familiar names come to mind. I even dare say that their debut self-titled album consists entirely of masterfully reimagined scraps of iconic tunes and feels built for nostalgia.
“Who wants to live forever? / It doesn’t matter / It doesn’t matter,” ponders Van Etten right from the get-go in the grandiose and piercing electronic opener “Live Forever”, as if chatting with Oasis, who have an answer to this question. When you’re over 40, such reflections are inevitable, especially for parents and musicians who sometimes become a cure or a placebo for their listeners. The lead single, “Afterlife”, filled with sadness and hope, was written right after one of Sharon Van Etten’s biggest fans, who had been battling “breathing issues”, passed away. “I want to see you in the afterlife / Want you to tell me what you think it’s like / Come and tell me it’ll be alright,” she sings with a touch of light sadness.
If this record had been released in the 1990s, gothic music lovers would surely have predicted a great future for this gloomy and wise musician and her mystical band. Just look at their live performance on Fallon—it’s the 69 Eyes in the flesh! Even the album cover feels like the perfect homage to the Cure‘s Pornography, My Bloody Valentine‘s Isn’t Anything, Slowdive‘s Souvlaki, and other iconic artworks.
Despite her folk and indie background, Van Etten perfectly cloaks herself in the moody allure of our favorite dark wave bands from the 1980s and 1990s. “All these things we think we lack / All this time we can’t get back,” as if winking at us, she sings with her breathy voice in “Idiot Box” against the backdrop of krautrock-y drums, Slowdive-worthy guitar licks, and a Gus Dapperton’s “Bluebird”-evoking melody with familiar “Ooh, ooh-ooh”.
In the pulsating and playful “Somethin’ Ain’t Right”, built on a post-punk-driven bassline, she supplies a chorus that could easily be sung by Jim Morrison or Johnny Cash, simultaneously raising a very zeitgeisty question. “Do you believe in compassion for enemies? / Who is to blame when it falls to decay?” she asks, concluding the song with a Talking Heads quote: “He said it’s the same / The same as it ever was.”
In the politically charged “I Can’t Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)”, which sounds like a post-Joe Biden anthem, Van Etten delivers an almost Blondie-ish cheerful atmosphere, coming up with a very timely and meme-worthy line: “We heard about it on the news today / It’s hard to listen what they have to say / Turn it up, to turn it down.”
In “Indio”, an almost paint-by-numbers blend of the Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry” and the Sundays, and the hypnotic “Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)”, reminiscent of Placebo‘s “Pure Morning” or something from early Blur, Van Etten elevates her vocals to heights where she has never been before. Three years have passed since the release of her previous full-length, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, but now, she’s an entirely new musician with a range of unusual sonic decisions and vocal modulations.
If she had gone under a secret moniker with this release, there would have been only a slim chance of guessing that it was the Sharon Van Etten we knew because her signature, fluid voice is hardly recognizable in the other songs, except for “Live Forever”, “Afterlife”, and “Trouble”. Nevertheless, she managed to stay true.
The characters of Hua Hsu’s renowned memoir Stay True once expressed the opinion that it’s important to “stay true”: “True to yourself. True to who you might have become.” Van Etten perfectly follows this covenant by preserving her traits even in this new form and extending her sound to one she has always wanted to have but never dared to… until now.