Sharon Van Etten

Sharon Van Etten’s is a sadness both entirely personal and universally understood. You can become enfolded in it, luxuriate in it, repeat it on a loop the way a trauma victim relives an accident. It’s ocean deep. Romance is a blasted countryside, a haunted room, something in your peripheral vision that you look for too late and it’s gone. Can there be any praise greater than that she’s a songwriter who makes us feel it, even through the deluge?

Where her early efforts were stripped down affairs, and her last album, Tramp (2012), seemed somewhat at odds with the more meticulous aspects of its production, Are We There is the promise of a fully-formed Sharon Van Etten album made manifest. Here, Van Etten is assured, even comfortable in the nooks and crannies of her songwriting. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, to learn that she also produced the album herself. “Taking Chances” is her best song, and epic mantras “Afraid of Nothing” and “Your Love is Killing Me” would be right up there if her whole catalogue weren’t turning out to be so damned consistent.

It’s not just the Glow in love with (and alienated by) love itself. Are We There was one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year, recognized by critics with differently tuned ears and strategic agendas as something authentic sounding enough to bypass both. It sounds so natural that you might be surprised to see how many performers were involved—seventeen in all, building around Van Etten’s undeniable voice. And, my god, that voice. It’s got to be one of the most distinctive and instantly accessible voices on the indie landscape today, a sultrier counterpart to Neko Case’s crackling jibe. Van Etten’s vulnerability emerges from a tired drawl, a world-weariness that is at once Zen and urgency distilled. It’s less mournful, maybe, than desirous.

When I listen to Van Etten’s voice, and her lyrics, which so often play on the notion of someone doing something that they know might not be the best for them, what I think of is a person saying “I want this so badly I can’t help myself.” Van Etten’s achingly human music is unafraid to wallow and reel in that want. It’s honest work, and its honesty is at the very heart of what makes it so excellent.