Sharon Van Etten

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.

I heard the CYHSY album about a year after I first heard Neutral Milk Hotel, and I think I was put off by the NMH-isms of the former. It seems like they roughly copped the lo-fi kookiness of old Elephant 6 band but left out all the eerie horn arrangements and guitar fuzz and self-mythologizing lyrics and weird production choices and everything else that made NMH interesting, so in the end they were just a run-of-the-mill "quirky" indie rock band. Jess Mangum's tuneless vocal freakouts worked well within the context of his songs because he was capable of singing sweetly and tunefully when he wanted to, whereas the CYHSY's guy just grated and bleated along 100% of the time (at least to my ears) like a metal dude who doesn't know when to take his growling down a notch. I dunno, maybe I'd like the band better if I went back and listened to them now. in some ways I was a much harsher critic in 2006 than I am now.

lol, grumbling, 90s Pearl Jam stuff was just about all I listened to when I was 15.

the best place to start with Amy Annelle is The Cimarron Banks (and after that, Songs for Creeps by The Places) btw. 'Forever In-Between' is a pretty good example of the vocal trick you're looking for.

xp i see what you mean, and i agree with you that cyhsy are incapable of making an album as rich as in the aeroplane over the sea -- they are just not the same class of band -- but still, the lo-fi, warbling quirkiness seemed like a durable schtick to me in high school, and i really loved "the skin of my yellow country teeth" because it was anthemic but the singer sounded, at the same time, drunk in a vulnerable way. in general too, i am just biased toward idiosyncratic singers... dylan and nico are my favorite vocalists.

i'm listening to forever in between now and it is perfect, thanks.

I really like the backing track of "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth", actually. it would be perfect if some 90s indie guy like Steven Malkmus was singing over it. make this happen!

glad you like the Amy Annelle song. I feel like I'm the only person in the world (or ILM, anyways) who stans for her.

yeah i like it a lot, but i have a serious soft spot melancholy female singer songwriters.

I hope everyone interested in this thread has given the excellent Torres album a listen.

And yes, that Torres album is good. Don't ignore Shelby Earl either!

Anyway, for this year -- Sharon's new album is streaming:

http://www.thecurrent.org/feature/2014/05/16/first-listen-sharon-van-etten-are-we-there

Man, this is sad, heavy stuff even for an SVE record. It's great, but some of these songs are like having somebody stand on your throat.

Obviously she touched on an abusive relationship on her first couple albums, but there's an ugliness and physicality on these songs that makes those earlier accounts seem whitewashed by comparison. There's so much trauma here it hurts; it breaks my heart that she went through all of this

the previous albums really didn't do much for me, but this one is hitting the spot.

"afraid of nothing" is a showstopper

I think "are we there yet" is one of my favorite albums of the year.

That's because it's brilliant.

The arrangements on this feel really rudimentary in that aggravating US indie way, which is a shame because with a big more care I feel like some of these songs could really be incredible. Still, 'Your Love Is Killing Me' is amazing.

I feel like taking every musician that played on this aside and gently explaining that it's okay for them to play a note off the beat every now and again. Virtually every song drags as a result, especially the stripped-down piano-led one in the middle.

that seems to be a common quality of "confessional" singer-songwriter stuff, where somehow the straightlaced quality of the playing is supposed to match the confessional sincerity of the lyrics. obv there are exceptions.

what is it about? this blancmange of song writing tropes agree very straight laced arrangements, conventional etc singer songwriter, yes yes all that but despite this I am getting more and more pulled into the swirl of van etten she is very charming and her stuff sounds authentic and heady whatever that means i mean a conventional singer songwriter still great? clearly the word conventional is the problem here who cares right just listen to the ebb and flow and get swept away by the romance of feeling something imagine that emotion still working in 2015 what a crazy thought

new(est) song from the ep coming out in a week or so, every bit as good as the best stuff from are we there imo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Gak2mKMrE

reviewed the i dont want to let you down ep, not an earth shaking project but 5 good to great songs and as a huge SVE fan i aint complaining about that
http://www.treblezine.com/reviews/23647-sharon-van-etten-i-dont-want-to-let-you-down-review-2/

She's an actress on that new Netflix show "The OA". She's good.

I just now discovered that in the credits. Also, fuck this show.

is she pregnant? I think I saw a post of her on fb that gave me that impression. I love her albums unreservedly.

I want to watch this show but I hear it will make me give up all hope on life

Man tramp is classic

Man like Olsen she’s singing about an abusive ex that should go duck themselves

Are We There real classic too

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