Latest news with #VanEtten
Chicago Tribune
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: It was a more poised and ready Sharon Van Etten at Salt Shed
Sharon Van Etten is ready to be front and center. Not that she hasn't been before, but perhaps the type and scope of her music made it more difficult for her to command the stage. But with her band, the Attachment Theory, as evident at Friday night's set at the Salt Shed, audiences can now witness a more confident and self-assured version of Van Etten, one who is ready and perhaps eager to embody her true rock superstardom. As a long-time fan, I wasn't quite sure what to think of this new direction, first heard on her self-titled record with her collaborative band, the Attachment Theory, released this February. But it's a pivotal moment in Van Etten's career. And it all comes together in the live show. This is not Sharon Van Etten pretending to be someone she is not. Instead, it is an artist embracing the person she was always meant to be, and doing it with a level of fun and flirty humor that encourages her audience to let loose. There was no cell phone in sight as Van Etten and the Attachment Theory entered the stage and performed the opener 'Live Forever.' A hypnotic purple light show complemented Van Etten's elegiac voice that pierced through the track's spindly synths. 'Holy moly!' Van Etten exclaimed after the audience's rapturous applause. Van Etten's enthusiasm spilled over into the next track, 'Afterlife,' where she began walking around the stage and interacting with both the band and the audience. It was a perfect fit for this new music, which has a certain vibrancy that invigorates the ear. On 'Idiot Box,' a post-punk stunner from her new record, Van Etten returned to her signature guitar. But she lets loose again on 'Comeback Kid,' from 2019's maximalist record 'Remind Me Tomorrow,' continuing to shake up the routine of her traditional stage shows. Van Etten leans into dancing. It's nothing too serious or refined but embodies a driving, propulsive energy, as if the mood of the track is running through her limbs. It's no wonder the infatuated audience began moving, too. Van Etten is as much singer-songwriter as she is frontwoman as she is band leader. And the Attachment Theory, with all of its effortless bombast, is the perfect accompaniment for this new stage in her career. Sometimes it is other people who push us in the ways we need to be pushed. If before she was often grouped in a community of millennial, indie rock singer-songwriters like Angel Olsen or Mitski, here Van Etten has proven that she is more than the assumptions of lazy music industry types who can't or won't see her for who she is. Take 'I Can't Imagine (Why You Feel This Way),' another track from her new record, a new wave-inspired sound inspired by David Byrne and the B-52s. Synth-driven and amusing, it's a sparkly and vivacious track that elicits a sparkly and vivacious performance. There were slower moments, of course. 'Trouble,' with its steady cadence and unnerving musicality, served as a nice transition before the group performed more of Van Etten's older tracks. It's easy to get swept up into the emotions of her music, whether old or new. Fan favorites like 2014's 'Every Time the Sun Comes Up' and 'Tarifa,' (which she dedicated to filmmaker David Lynch) fit perfectly with her new music. Van Etten's siren-like melodies are evocative. But more importantly, there's a throughline in this new music. It's cinematic and epic, a walloping collection of earthy soundscapes that home in on the intricacies and intimacies of life. Sometimes, that comes with a little bit of a groove and a dance, and sometimes it requires the listener to stand present and still. Either way, it's great stuff from an artist with many more surprises up her sleeve.
The Sun
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Sharon Van Etten and The Attachment Theory release one of 2025's best long players.
THE latest album from indie-pop queen Sharon Van Etten has her teaming up with The Attachment Theory, which is quite a surprise given her previous six solo efforts relied on a rotating cast of friends and sessionists as backing musicians. An invitation to jam, a peculiarity which Van Etten admits to being alien to, resulted in two songs from an initial session. Pleased at the fruitful outcome, the 44-year old American chanteuse and the Attachment Theory continued with this blueprint and the result is a one of the year's most enchanting alternative pop releases. At the very forefront is Van Etten's haunting and ethereal vocals, inviting all and sundry to wrap themselves in a blanket of melancholy. Recalling the sounds of Alison Goldfrapp and Cat Power, this album is almost a throwback to 90s chillout albums – designed for the comedown after a hard night raving to big beats at some abandoned warehouse. This is music to zone out to. The sort of album you stick on after a hard day's toil, letting its cool vibes wash over you like the sound of gentle rainfall outside your window. But this does not mean the album is mere background music. Instead, it invites listeners to just sit back and soak in the atmospheric vibes. Opening two tracks Live Forever and Afterlife deal with mortality, which sets the mood straight away as Van Etten's melancholia-drenched vocal chords set the tone of this ultra-chilled long player. The Attachment Theory is unobtrusive with its playing and allow Van Etten's singing to take centre stage. However, that does not mean it is bland or boring. It is anything but as the trio fashion interesting soundscapes peppered with lots of eletronica elements to keep proceedings intriguing. Think Beck at his most eclectic but not as busy and you will sort of get the picture. Even when things are taken up a notch and the band hit an uptempo vibe, Van Etten's vocals still remain centre stage, taking listeners on an aural journey that is akin to albums such as Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen, We are Floating in Space. Yes, it is that good and certainly deserves comparisons with chill-out classics such as that. Channeling the spirit of prime-era Talking Heads, the Attachment Theory take the art-funk template to new albeit restrained heights on tracks such as Southern Life and Somethin' Ain't Right, with a bass line that is guaranteed to get toes tapping. There are no vocal histrionics on the entire album as Van Etten's singing barely rises above a whisper. It is all very calm and composed – all very grown up in fact. But at no point does this record meander into mediocrity or middle-of-the-road banality. It just delivers top notch chill-out anthems in an almost lazy manner but therein lies its charms. Effortless brilliance is something to be marvelled and celebrated. Make absolutely no mistake, this album is one of the best to drop in 2025 so far – every home should own it. At the very least, it should be on the playlists of those who simply enjoy great music. Essential stuff.
The Sun
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Ultimate chill pill
THE latest album from indie-pop queen Sharon Van Etten has her teaming up with The Attachment Theory, which is quite a surprise given her previous six solo efforts relied on a rotating cast of friends and sessionists as backing musicians. An invitation to jam, a peculiarity which Van Etten admits to being alien to, resulted in two songs from an initial session. Pleased at the fruitful outcome, the 44-year old American chanteuse and the Attachment Theory continued with this blueprint and the result is a one of the year's most enchanting alternative pop releases. At the very forefront is Van Etten's haunting and ethereal vocals, inviting all and sundry to wrap themselves in a blanket of melancholy. Recalling the sounds of Alison Goldfrapp and Cat Power, this album is almost a throwback to 90s chillout albums – designed for the comedown after a hard night raving to big beats at some abandoned warehouse. This is music to zone out to. The sort of album you stick on after a hard day's toil, letting its cool vibes wash over you like the sound of gentle rainfall outside your window. But this does not mean the album is mere background music. Instead, it invites listeners to just sit back and soak in the atmospheric vibes. Opening two tracks Live Forever and Afterlife deal with mortality, which sets the mood straight away as Van Etten's melancholia-drenched vocal chords set the tone of this ultra-chilled long player. The Attachment Theory is unobtrusive with its playing and allow Van Etten's singing to take centre stage. However, that does not mean it is bland or boring. It is anything but as the trio fashion interesting soundscapes peppered with lots of eletronica elements to keep proceedings intriguing. Think Beck at his most eclectic but not as busy and you will sort of get the picture. Even when things are taken up a notch and the band hit an uptempo vibe, Van Etten's vocals still remain centre stage, taking listeners on an aural journey that is akin to albums such as Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen, We are Floating in Space. Yes, it is that good and certainly deserves comparisons with chill-out classics such as that. Channeling the spirit of prime-era Talking Heads, the Attachment Theory take the art-funk template to new albeit restrained heights on tracks such as Southern Life and Somethin' Ain't Right, with a bass line that is guaranteed to get toes tapping. There are no vocal histrionics on the entire album as Van Etten's singing barely rises above a whisper. It is all very calm and composed – all very grown up in fact. But at no point does this record meander into mediocrity or middle-of-the-road banality. It just delivers top notch chill-out anthems in an almost lazy manner but therein lies its charms. Effortless brilliance is something to be marvelled and celebrated. Make absolutely no mistake, this album is one of the best to drop in 2025 so far – every home should own it. At the very least, it should be on the playlists of those who simply enjoy great music. Essential stuff.
Boston Globe
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Sharon Van Etten on adding the band name to the marquee
It wasn't just about reconnection after an extended period of uncertain isolation, either. The singer viewed that degree of closeness and engagement with the process as a way of offering her musicians ownership over the material: 'As a band, they give up so much to leave their friends and family behind to support your ideas. This is another extension of me wanting to write songs from the ground up and share in that creative process and show the love and hopefully help everybody feel that much more invested and cared for and looked after.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up That sense of communal togetherness was key to 'Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory,' a seventh album and a debut all at the same time. The band (which plays Advertisement 'I think the most surprising thing to me was that it was really natural,' Van Etten says. 'On my previous records, I've written by myself. I've built it up by myself. There was nobody telling me when I had to finish writing songs, because I would have a collection of songs. At band camp, however, Van Etten was less precious about having to know what she wanted before the band entered the equation. With the musicians using their chosen instruments to explore rather than fill in an existing framework, they came up with chord progressions that the singer would find melodies for and develop. 'There were moments where I helped define what was happening next, but they were naturally playing things that I was very inspired by,' says Van Etten. 'It felt very intuitive.' Advertisement Intuitive though it may have been, the new songs mark a substantial break from Van Etten's previous work. If the sharp and propulsive 'Mistakes' felt like an oasis of danceability on the otherwise expansive and atmospheric 'We've Been Going About This All Wrong,' then 'Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory' is all oasis, sort of. Krautrock and post-punk influences abound, from Neu! and Can to the Cure and Joy Division, and Van Etten likens 'Live Forever' to Even nominally familiar ground comes with new elements. 'Fading Beauty' has some of the same slow momentum and spacious build as Van Etten's earlier work, but it's filled with textures that are new to her, and 'Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)' finds her using her voice in ways that she hasn't tried before. She credits the spontaneity of the band process for the latter. 'It was more rhythmic [ideas] that I was trying to mess around with, and they had this kind of proggy jam happening,' Van Etten says. 'I was just trying to play around with patterns and syncopations, and I felt like it was getting repetitive for me, melodically, so I was like, Where can I go from here, where it kind of sounds like a different instrument? And that's when I go high. And I think also I don't normally do a lot of talking-style singing, so I was just trying to experiment with that. Again, not knowing it was for anything. Advertisement 'When you have that freedom, or that sense [that] it's not being recorded for a record and no one has to hear this beyond this circle of trust here, I think you just throw as much paint as you can. I didn't know what would stick.' Perhaps it's that level of trust that leads Van Etten to refer to the Attachment Theory not just in terms of camp but in terms of family, referencing their 'sibling dynamics' and seeing each other as a traveling support system. But if that's not enough, there's plenty to be found on the road regardless. 'You'll probably see my sister at the [Roadrunner] show. If I'm [on the] East Coast, some Van Etten will be there. I think my dad's bringing, like, ten people to Philly,' says the New Jersey native with a chuckle. 'So I'm always prepared to have a relative at a show. And I feel so fortunate to have such a supportive family, even when it gets hard to see them all. 'I did have a cousin at a Bowery Ballroom show [in New York] get a little drunk and yell 'You [expletive] slut!' at the front row, and I had to explain to everyone around her that it was my cousin just messing with me. But it was very funny, and she hasn't lived that down yet, my cousin Jackie.' SHARON VAN ETTEN & THE ATTACHMENT THEORY At Roadrunner on Thursday, May 1. 8 p.m. Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@ or on Bluesky @ Advertisement
New York Times
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Sharon Van Etten Finds Her Way Home
Backstage at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, N.J., on a bitterly cold February night, the singer and songwriter Sharon Van Etten drank tea and hung out with family members. At her show earlier that evening — her first appearance at the legendary venue and her third show on tour in support of her seventh album, 'Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory' — she joked that the gig was booked in response to demand by her own family, and likely she was related in some way to approximately 10 percent of the audience. 'You guys sound great!' shouted an older man in a blue National and War on Drugs T-shirt. 'Awww thanks,' Ms. Van Etten said, before turning to the crowd and announcing, 'that wasn't even my dad!' Her dad, Steve Van Etten, was there, in fact, hanging out afterward in the green room with her mom, Janice Van Etten, and older sister, Jessica Van Etten, an elementary school teacher in Monmouth County, N.J., along with other relatives and friends. Ms. Van Etten is most associated with the Brooklyn music scene of the 2010s. Her third album, 2012's 'Tramp,' was produced by the National's Aaron Dessner, released on the indie label Jagjaguwar and featured guest spots by Beirut's Zach Condon and the Walkmen's Matt Barrick, among others. It established Ms. Van Etten as a distinct new voice, an artist with a unique ability to make rage and self-doubt sound pretty. In the years since, Ms. Van Etten has never made the same album twice. She's chameleonic, generating a striking number of notably different sounding tracks that become widely adored soundtrack-of-your-life instant nostalgia bombs, the kind of songs that go on mixtapes for new crushes and early midlife crisis road trip playlists. See: 2014's lilting, haunted 'Every Time the Sun Comes Up'; 2019's 'Seventeen,' which packs the gut-wrenching sweetness of an entire coming-of-age novella in one four-plus minute slice of folk-rock; and, her latest contribution to this collection, the sparkly dirge 'Afterlife' off her latest album. Unsurprisingly, given the cinematic moodiness of her work, Ms. Van Etten has also explored film and TV work, from acting in a recurring role in Netflix's 'The OA,' to scoring and composing. 'Sharon is more than a collaborator. She is a partner-in-crime who is thinking deeply about the entire project and not just her part in it, no matter big or small,' said filmmaker Celine Song, for whom Ms. Van Etten (with Zach Dawes) wrote 'Quiet Eyes' for Ms. Song's Oscar-nominated film 'Past Lives.' 'She's a complete artist.' But the Hollywood log line version of Ms. Van Etten's life story — Jersey girl with cool hair moves to the big city and finds her creative community, her voice, fame and fortune — comes many, many chapters into a more complex, circuitous and wrenching tale. First, there was the failed attempt at college in Murfreesboro, Tenn., a place she'd barely heard of much less been when she moved there at 18 to attend the music recording program at Middle Tennessee State. There was an emotionally abusive, undermining boyfriend, the mental breakdown and attempts to restart her life, taking jobs at IHOP and McDonald's and the overnight shift at the Donut Hole. There were addiction issues, a multi-year estrangement from her family, and eventually, four years after leaving home, the escape from Tennessee orchestrated by Ms. Van Etten's kid sister and the dramatic return to her parents home on Thanksgiving Day in 2003 'with my tail between my legs.' Before that there was the Jersey girl high school experience, spent lusting not after the promise of the glittering skyline across the river but 'driving around in cars, smoking cigarettes, listening to music and going to record stores and sometimes to the beach or driving to Philly just to get a cheesesteak.' And before all of that, there was the joyfully chaotic suburban childhood spent as the middle child of five in a ramshackle old Victorian in Nutley, N.J., with a wrap-around porch where her father first taught her to ride a bike. No Longer Solo 'Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory' may be the singer's seventh album but it's her first collaborating in full with her band. Ms. Van Etten has been working with most of her bandmates for years — they are 'like family' — but even until recently she's held on to this nagging fear of letting go of the solo title. But it's never been about ego. 'It takes patience and courage and openness to make things happen together,' said Angel Olsen, a friend and collaborator. 'Doing it all under your own name is very very different.' For Ms. Van Etten, trusting her music could be safely shared with other people is a lesson she is still learning. 'Because of my ex, I had to write in hiding — he didn't like my music and he didn't like me writing,' she said. 'Music turned into this place that was just for me, very private. When I finally left and I started playing out for real I had this guard up.' The songwriter Doug Keith was the first musician to ever try to put a band together for Ms. Van Etten, back in 2010, five years after she first moved to New York, when she was still playing gigs completely on her own. 'I just kept putting him off,' she recalled. 'My ex was always just like, any dude that wants to play with you, just wants to get in your pants.' Mr. Keith eventually had to explicitly say to Ms. Van Etten, 'I'm happily married, I love your music, and I really just want to help you with your show.' In a way, every album Ms. Van Etten has made since her 2009 debut solo release, 'Because I Was in Love,' has been part of a process of adjusting to the idea that isolation breeds confinement not security. With her latest album, the singer is leaving her instinct to stay solo out of self-protection behind once and for all, in her creative life. And on the day after the Stone Pony show, as we drove around New Jersey revisiting some of the key sights of her youth, she's thinking about how her tendency to seek freedom through separation has influenced her personal life as well. Earlier in the day there was a visit to the Princeton Record Exchange where Ms. Van Etten signed copies of the new album and giddily flipped through the bargain bins, as she's been doing for a couple decades now, forever in search of that next record she's never heard of that might wind up changing her life. There were tuna melts at Holsten's ice cream parlor in Bloomfield, where the Van Etten family used to go after ice skating (and where David Chase shot the last scene of 'The Sopranos'). And there was talk of stopping at the singer's cousin's hair salon to experience 'full-on Jerz,' as Ms. Van Etten's husband and manager, Zeke Hutchins called it. But the singer had to get to a pre-arranged tour of the rambling Victorian Ms. Van Etten lived in during elementary school, which is still owned by the people her family sold it to over 30 years ago. 'I will probably cry,' she warned. 'We really did have a nice childhood,' Ms. Van Etten said during a moment of quiet in the car. 'I left for Tennessee to rebel against the sweetest people's world. They didn't understand me, maybe, but …' Was the conflict mostly within herself and not them? 'Exactly,' she said. When Ms. Van Etten was the most lost back in Tennessee, the singer's then boyfriend tried to convince her that no one in her family could be trusted. 'Family is just blood, they don't care about you, they don't get you, you don't owe them anything,' she recalled him saying. But it never fully stuck. (She used to call her little sister from a series of burner phones. 'I wasn't a drug dealer, I was just trying to talk to my family.') It wasn't easy coming back home. 'It's not like it went back and everything was fine. We had to repair wounds and have some difficult conversations, and some conversations we still cannot have, but I knew that everyone wanted me to be okay. I feel so grateful.' The House on Prospect Back at the Stone Pony, with assorted members of the Van Etten family all together, the subject of the house on Prospect came up a lot. Ms. Van Etten's cousin Jackie was texting, wanting to know when the singer was going to actually see it. Janice Van Etten said she still dreams about the house, and wondered if her husband remembered what he said about the staircase when they first saw it. 'You said, the girls will get married here, remember?' The family's youngest, Peter Van Etten (aka 'Sweetie Petie') was born in the house. And Ms. Van Etten remembered how her dad and one of his brothers, Uncle John, would come over on the weekends, get a six pack and work on the house. 'Uncle John had the best laugh,' Ms. Van Etten recalled, later noting that three of her father's brothers, including John, died prematurely. On the day the family moved in, Ms. Van Etten, who was around 4 at the time, got lost in the shuffle. She was eventually found hiding under a grand piano the previous owners had left behind. 'I found shelter,' she said. 'That piano became my best friend.' When the singer was in sixth grade, her mom, who stayed at home for 15 years raising the five kids while Steve Van Etten worked, finished her teaching degree at Montclair State, got a job, and the family moved to Clinton, N.J. But the house on Prospect became a symbol of a particularly happy period in the Van Etten family, and, over time, a representation of the determined love that binds them. 'I guess this sounds really corny,' Janice Van Etten said back at the Stone Pony, 'but when we lived in the house on Prospect, nothing had gone wrong.' 'There it is,' Ms. Van Etten exclaimed, smiling, her eyes filling with the predicted tears, as the house came into view at the top of a small hill.
