Subtlety is a advantage within the singer-songwriter world. Within the face of a dying earth, nevertheless, and energized by collaborating for the primary time in a writing capability together with her dwell band, the Attachment Concept – Devra Hoff on bass and vocals, Jorge Balbi on drums and machines, and TEEN’s Teeny Lieberson on synth, piano, guitar and vocals – Sharon Van Etten has made considered one of her boldest and biggest-sounding data so far. (The impeccable manufacturing work by Marta Salogni, who’s knowledgeable equally charged data by Björk and Depeche Mode, additionally deserves credit score.) Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Concept is as thunderous as it’s propulsive, disquieting in its storm of existential questions however deliberate in the way it sequences them; sounding like doubt at occasions, despair at others. However at its most resonant, Van Etten’s voice soars with pure marvel, unburdened by judgment or a simple method out: “Oh, what it should be like.” She’s singing about Southern life right here, however actually, about compassion – one of many few issues that also doesn’t come connected with an expiration date.
1. Reside Eternally
“Who needs to dwell perpetually?” is the query Sharon Van Etten hits us with firstly of the album, a brooding thought repeated prefer it’s all the time seeping by the shadows of our lives. Synths waft, throb, and swell in the identical atmospheric wavelength because the track’s percussion, however solely initially. “It doesn’t matter,” she later sighs, her voice rising with resolve, which the band finally transforms right into a prayer. By the tip of the track, they’re locked right into a sturdy groove, and Van Etten is howling out her desperation. The brand new band’s dynamic potential is firmly established; remarkably, it’s additionally the primary track they wrote deliberately from begin to end after they went into the studio.
2. Afterlife
Sharon Van Etten goals for grandiosity solely when she is aware of she has a hit in her fingers. However the depth of ‘Afterlife’ additionally befits the load of its material: the track was written across the dying of a fan she and her band had befriended. Consistent with the tone of the opener, although, Van Etten frames ‘Afterlife’ not as an elegy however as a automobile for questioning as existential as is it profoundly private: “Does it really feel like coming dwelling?” she wonders, making it sound higher than any form of paradise.
3. Fool Field
Because the band turns its gaze outward, ‘Fool Field’ is a name for emotional launch: “Nervous, drained, desensitized/ Let it go!” A slick bassline anchors a extra acquainted indie rock association, a minimum of till Van Etten sings about realizing it’s all only a dream – and the band makes it glisten like one.
4. Hassle
This track instantly delivered to thoughts an immortal lyric from Are We There, an album that, unbelievably, is over a decade previous: “Each time the solar comes up, I’m in bother.” As Van Etten accepts accountability for previous errors and makes glib predictions of the long run, bother remains to be perpetually on the horizon, and he or she on the middle of it. Like most songs in regards to the concern of dropping something, it takes its time, warmly hanging on to the nice components. Oh, and if you happen to appreciated the bass half on ‘Fool Field’, wait until you hear the groove Devra Hoff holds down on this one.
5. Indio
‘Indio’ is a spiky slice of dream-pop, which isn’t essentially what you’d count on from Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Concept. The band quickens its tempo as Van Etten dips into her breathy falsetto, harmonizing with keyboardist Teeny Lieberson to hypnotic impact.
6. I Can’t Think about (Why You Really feel This Approach)
Van Etten completely instructions the track’s strutting groove, which lands someplace between disco, post-punk, and new wave. It’s not precisely uplifting, although: she’s only a traveler, hoping the individuals on the identical prepare as her, listening to the identical screams, received’t help the identical assassin they thought could be their savior. Sound acquainted?
7. One thing Ain’t Proper
The four-on-the-floor bounce hyperlinks this track with the earlier one: the traveler not solely questions these in authority, however now the family and friends liable for placing them in cost. “Do you imagine in compassion for enemies?/ Who’s responsible when it falls to decay?” she sings, and it’s really easy to start out buzzing alongside.
8. Southern Life (What It Should Be Like)
This track arrived at some extent within the band’s course of the place Van Etten wished to loosen issues up and never rehearse songs to dying; the association could have began out as a jam, however clearly they’d lengthy found their collaborative language. Lyrically, Van Etten continues to dwell on the theme of compassion for many who could maintain opposing views, this time contemplating her personal historical past. She urges you to see issues from the opposite facet earlier than together with herself within the effort: “We should think about what it should be like.” Her supply alone, stretching every syllable with out pressure, is compelling sufficient.
9. Fading Magnificence
Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment could also be capturing for daring, formidable rock music, however that doesn’t imply they received’t cease to zone in on “the refined magnificence of sunshine.” Ethereal and delicate, it’s a method of displaying us what’s at stake, as if anybody with an oz of perspective may ignore it. “All of us face it,” she intones in a revelatory second, “All that’s life.”
10. I Need You Right here
All of the world’s a stage and Sharon Van Etten is sitting on the fringe of it, bellowing out her devotion. In fairly a tangible method, it’s the opposite finish of ‘Reside Eternally’: she needs to, and he or she is aware of who she needs to share it with – not in some imaginary utopia, however right here. Because the track builds up and Van Etten reveals that each one of this – the sweetness, the change, the fad – quantities to “a second,” it might appear somewhat deflating on paper. However the band locations us proper within the coronary heart of it, and like a bolt of lightning we wish it, too. For no matter it’s value.
