Sharon Van Etten

Couldn't find a thread on her. First album was really good, and she just put out a second that's a grower. Thoughts?

I think the new one is a big improvement upon the first, which was pleasant but a little samey. "One Day" is the standout track for me. I've been aching for a studio version ever since hearing her play it on pitchfork.tv earlier this year. But it's kinda funny, i like the sound of it more coming out of tinny laptop speakers than out of my regular speakers or headphones. It's got this great familiar am radio vibe.

i like the new one a bunch. it seems a super lazy comparison for an acoustic guitar player but the first half of the lp is kinda early-dylan, to me. she does the steel pedal thing without seeming too retro or affected-country, too.

Sharon covering "Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me"
http://soundcloud.com/morrisday/sharon-van-etten-last-night-i-dreamt-somebody-that-loved-me

thanks!

she's a marvellous wonder, although i'm a sop who prefers acoustic-y melancholy to midtempo electric

Finally giving her an ear -- yeah, this is good stuff.

I love "Epic", which I discovered last autumn on a joyous record store crawl around Williamsburg.

she has a good angriness

yeah, i fell pretty hard for 'epic' - among other things, it is catchy as hell, i had a different song from it buzzing around my head every day for a good while

I pretty much found because I was in love to be exhausting and unpleasant, possibly because I was introduced to her by hearing her on that Antlers record that was also exhausting and unpleasant, but 'epic' is just so well put-together and her show opening for Junip in which she played it in its entirety was one of the best things I saw last year. really looking forward to the next one, which I guess is being worked on with guy from the National now

Interviewing her in an hour and a half. Anybody have a burning question or two for her?

My feature/interview is up. Cool person!

Trying this again, apparently they had to adjust the URL for whatever reason:

http://www.ocweekly.com/2011-03-24/music/sharon-van-etten-epic-detroit-bar/

good lord, this new one is awesome

You have the full thing? I hate you.

i....i'm sorry

"give out" is esp great, early on

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/29/145731033/first-listen-sharon-van-etten-tramp

Really enjoying this so far.

This is real good.

i was really disappointed the first time i played this, really disappointed, bc i think the last two are so good & that serpents was amazing in a whole new way. but then i played it again & liked it some more. i don't like the beirut guy. but i'm gonna stick with it. expect progress updates

Finally listened to her latest on the NPR stream after seeing a big Sunday Washington Post interview and reading that my local alt-weekly arts editor loves this--- eh, it's ok. Maybe I need to give it more time. On first listen I do not hear enough variety.

tramp is a very strong record. not my sort of thing, usually, but this is great and really catchy in a classy, subtle way

it's weird to me that this thread isn't drowning in hateration, her rise to prominence is prime indie-hater bait

how so

I like Tramp just fine but it's no patch on Epic.

I love Warsaw. I think the record in a whole is a grower. Anyway it's good breakup listening.

her rise to prominence is prime indie-hater bait

Well, the new one is awash in guests from Beirut, the National, Wye Oak, Walkmen, Doveman, Julianna Barwick. If you have a problem with current indie, you'd have a problem with this. Me, I thought it sounded a bit like the first Breeders record retrofitted for NPR listeners, but not necessarily in a bad way.

not sure what you are on about there, the first breeders? was that pod? this sharon van etten has nothing to do with that kind of demoish sounding indie rock. it's more of a songwriter album in the vein of joni mitchell, cat power etc. excellent stuff, great hooks esp. the first five songs, a dreamy voice which goes to the bone, i didn't dig into the lyrics yet but apparently they are very personal about her trying to survive on the roads of new york, she had no home when she recorded the album. i'd like to know if warsaw has got something to do with joy division, probably not but what hell of a song!

if you want to compare it with a first album that would be much more the first michelle shocked, the texas campfire tapes though this is much more polished and arranged, it is not her first album and it shows.

it's weird to me that this thread isn't drowning in hateration, her rise to prominence is prime indie-hater bait

it surely is but maybe she just won't be big enough to circulate outside the npr-indie enclave.

I'm a latecomer to her -- have been sort of aware of her as somebody I wanted to check out -- but noticing that she's coming to town next week prompted me to get Epic and Tramp. Enjoying both, need some time to sink in, but I'm looking forward to the show.

After going back and hearing Epic, I definitely prefer that one. The new one gets too bogged down by that Brooklyn indie approach, which I don't think suits her as well.

what would you say defines "that Brooklyn indie approach" exactly?

lol i know that was super weird and vague, i guess just the vibe of the whole album, it sounded a lot like latter-day National albums (which makes sense, given the producer) and Walkmen albums. which is fine for those bands, but i don't think the sound works as well with Sharon's voice. i think she needs something a little more gritty and raw and not so, i don't know, NPRish.

Dag, she puts on a good show. Terrific performer, great lovely voice, she's touring with a really sharp band. Nice range in the set, from quiet murmury moments to some real howling anthemic rock.

warsaw's cool

tipsy otm.
her show in manchester was spellbinding from start to finish, with a tiptop backing band to boot.

warsaw's cool

yeah i like the new album quite a bit but i also keep just playing this song over and over

did anybody hear the demos record
i wanna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv20Hlfl1Po

blorp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv20Hlfl1Po

i am listening to this & it kinda slays, fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2duIAh5BbY

it's super messy & raw. i was not so crazy about the record & this is like the antidote; not in sweetly recasting the songs as lighter, whisperier sve-classic slow jams but in being boombox & drum machine recordings of someone howling their songs into shape. it's a $7 cdr from the label, also.

uuuugh, these are so, so much better. for the love of god, please never record with the national again sharon van etten. that demo version of serpents is an eye opener.

serpents was actually the song i liked on the record, i think it works, i am still trying to find the 7" because the b-side is nice, too. & iirc julianna barwick was playing on the record somewhere, so i can sorta feel the idea of SVE + group, rather than just doing her one man band thing. but then there is the guy from beirut singing & it's just, just what is this, you know. the serpents demo is killer anyway, yes. i hear she is real into leonard cohen, it's kinda like hearing this, the pre-edit jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os_8Xpl2Jsc

some of the lyrical swaps in serpents are kinda fascinating btw

http://youtu.be/M4TCAjfGN1M --A video of Sharon covering touring mate Nick Cave's _Boatman's Call_ cut, "People They Ain't No Good", during a radio session. It's really lovely. Skip to 1:20 for the performance.

i really like the warbling aspect of her singing in "give out", where she allows her voice to drift off key in a manner reminiscent of the built to spill guy and the clap your hands say yeah guy. are there other female singers who sing in this very indie style?

Kristen Hersh?

*Kristin

also Amy Annelle. I have to say that the CYHSY guy's voice is one of my least favorite sounds in music.

yeah, you are not alone in thinking that. but you are not with me. that album came out when i was 15 or something though so i think that crackling, off-key sound, affected as it is, is a thing that works for me when it is done well. also i see it as a variation of jeff mangum's singing voice, and ITAOTS was super-formative to me.

but i can see how it would sound grating to other people, kind of like the grumbling, 90s, pearl jam voice is just the worst sound ever for me. thanks for the tips.

Well, I think this album is a marked improvement over the last one, which sounded like crap even when the songs were good. But I prefer her doing slow and sad.

Interesting- I think her last album is by far her best. I like some of the older stuff too but I felt like she’d hit a new level with that one. But the new album is much more of a piece with her earlier output.

It's down to whether you like dreary folk shit or pop music, I guess. I mean I like both but I didn't find the poppiest moments on the last album to be very convincing (though I like seeing her play those songs live; but I felt like the performances on the album were more hesitant and the production really amped up to add energy that wasn't quite there in the studio and as a result things I like about her sounded buried).

I can’t stop listening to this album. Too short is my only complaint. There are so many beautiful songs on this.

this album is def better than the previous

Hm! I had no idea ILM didn't think much of her last album.

it’s good but it felt like a few of the new production tricks distracted from what i liked about her. i love dirgey dramatic sharon, i like feeling like her songs are gonna cover me very slowly with their big black wings

I like the new album so far and it seems to grow with each play. Especially « headspace » which is great although she might have gone a bit over the top with the repetition of the lyrics in the chorus !

Headspace is my favorite track on the album

I will say that several of the songs tend to be builds that just repeat, then grow in intensity, and then end; there is less of what you may call 'intricate songwriting' involved in something like Anything. But, at the same time, Anything is one of the best songs on the album. So it's not like it's not working. I'm sensitive to this stuff because when I write songs like this (two chords that repeat over and over for some amount of time) one of my bandmates gives me shit and says it needs 'something else'; sometimes he's right, sometimes I disagree with him. In the case of Anything, the 'something else' is really increased volume and layered overdubs. This is either a legit approach to writing a song to you, or a cop out. I think it's legit, but I do see the other side.

Anything sounds like Belinda Carlisle.

this is definitely my favorite sve album, wow

"born" very fumbling towards ecstasy

...aoty

I don’t know enough about her œuvre but I really like this album, yeah

'far away' has some very definite Cocteau Twins vibes to it once the drum and bass comes in

caught the Wildhearts tour last night (SVE, Angel Olsen, and Julien Baker), really great show though curious to have Angel Olsen take the headliner slot. I gather that SVE is a very gracious and nice person and that may have been her idea, but it is kind of unfair to Angel Olsen; a lot of people bailed during her lower-energy, half-country set (their loss, she is pretty incredible)

SVE's stage presence was A+ at the show I saw. Was she wearing her badass leather pants again?

I definitely did bail during AO, but that had more to do with sheer physical exhaustion than anything. Reaching yr mid-30s means you gotta know when to say "enough," and 3+ hours in a sun-baked 90° outdoor venue with no seating is enough.

Man, I've never been able to do that (not a fan of summer at all) - one of the main reasons I've generally avoided festivals!

I love this album.

it's her best!!!

I hadn't seen SVE live in quite a few years, the only time I did she was opening (solo) for nick cave at the awful bill graham auditorium; she was so good then but yes, she's easily handling the badass live performer role she's taken up (and yes she was wearing leather pants). anyway this was a great show all around, Julien Baker sounding the best I've heard her (also playing with a full band).

I saw the show on Friday in LA, they were both great and I didn't get the sense that the crowd left during Angel. Folks seemed pretty stoked on both of them. (I missed Julien Baker.)

SVE had a much tougher vibe, almost kinda goth. I was happy that she packed a good amount of the set with songs from the last album alongside the new stuff. (Angel on the other hand stuck pretty much to the new album with a few throwbacks to older songs - but almost or entirely nothing from All Mirrors).

Does she play "Tarifa"? Just curious...

Not at the show I saw

how's the new one?

Dull

Wow, not getting that at all from this album. That middle stretch from "Trouble" to "I Can't Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)" slams. I dug the way the latter toys with the coda from "Heart of Glass."

To be fair I only listened to the first three songs. It just belt dry generic; the thrill I got from Tramp and Are We There just isn’t happening. I get the same way with the last album though.

I love "Afterlife" a hauntingly beautiful song.

New video and listening for the first time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVyhon0Nw8Q

I’m not sure where I fall with the new album yet, but I definitely like it more than the last one which I thought was a snooze.

I love it.

I think it’s very good except the two last songs that don’t seem necessary. « Trouble » is great.

Yeah, I cut the final two songs from my mix.

havent listened to the new record but id like to say theres v few better songs by anyone than seventeen

Surprised by how much I’m loving the new one.

same

hadn't been drawn in by the singles, but listening to the album has really been a pleasant surprise. her best in a while.

her last album was astonishingly beautiful i thought??? and this one is great too in a different way

i like feeling like her songs are gonna cover me very slowly with their big black wings

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, May 12, 2022 9:18 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh but this feeling unites the whole discog. good observation, old me

This is so good!

you're welcome!

That middle stretch from "Trouble" to "I Can't Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)" slams.

This is exactly the stretch that made me perk up. The bass playing is so good!

yes!

The last two tracks do feel out of place, but I like them both a lot. I'm wondering if there's an alternate tracklist for this that opens with "I Want You Here".

idk there's a lot of stylistic variety throughout this one, can't say the last two tracks particularly stick out to me. "i want you here" is probably my favorite too

It's such a great song!

I don't know, it just felt like the back-to-back pairing undersold the album a little. But that's just my first listen thought.

I get the bass-forward Cure/Siouxsie sound is an inspiration here, and it works without getting too pastiche. But it seems kinda funny taking on the 1987 goth look so specifically.

came around to this more after more listens but I really don't like Idiot Box. I also for some reason forgot that I do love the last album; it was Remind Me Tomorrow that I didn't like as much (and this album reminds me of that one). Nothing on this is as good as Like I Used To though, that song fucking rules.

otm about "Like I Used To." But I love Remind Me Tomorrow. SVE is funny for me because I don't think to listen to her very often but when I do I remember that I like her a lot. I'm enjoying the new one, need time to let it sink in. Definitely a bit of Lost Boys soundtrack vibe to it, in a good way.