Since her last album – 2014’s Are We There – Sharon Van Etten has dropped off music’s radar. She studied counselling, prompted by fans who have turned to this intense singer-songwriter in distress. Van Etten also became a successful actor, in the Netflix drama The OA. She had a son. Her latest album rings these changes, mostly in the album’s textures. Piano, the Jupiter 4 synthesiser and some elegant, spacious production courtesy of John Congleton replace Van Etten’s previous surging indie rock guitars.
And yet Van Etten remains resolutely herself: possessed of a slow-burning seethe that builds to swirling crescendos, she is a consummate surgeon of relationships, keen on Bruce Springsteen. Named after the option to postpone a computer update, the album starts with the drama of a short story.
“Sitting at the bar I told you everything/You said, ‘Holy shit, you almost died’,” runs I Told You Everything, hooking the listener in, as a faint imprint of the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil hovers in the piano chords. Comeback Kid channels gothic atmospherics and Seventeen is this assured album’s big pop hit, a tender and agonised song to Van Etten’s teenage self.
