The lack of a guitar attached to Sharon Van Etten as she opened her Roundhouse show was a clue for the uninitiated about her reinvention.
The US singer-songwriter’s excellent fifth album, Remind Me Tomorrow, is all droning electronics and rumbling bass with its marginally more upbeat lyrics influenced by her becoming a mother in 2017.
Rightly confident in her new direction, Van Etten played the record in its entirety alongside a band who brought out its muscular rhythms. Without an instrument to worry about, her keening vocal seemed even more dramatic during a thigh-slapping run through of the pulsing Jupiter 4.
Peering from under a feathered fringe, she was freed up to stalk the stage and punch the air during the driving tune Comeback Kid.
But Van Etten’s indie rock roots run deep, so her red guitar — apparently known as Ruby — returned for the folk-tinged favourite One Day and jangly warmth of Tarifa.
“Ruby was very jealous,” suggested Van Etten of the instrument’s non-appearance on her latest album.
The pairing of crunching riffs and buzzing synths made for a phenomenal rendition of Hands, a song at the heavier end of her spectrum. By way of contrast, the anthemic, nostalgia-filled single Seventeen still sounded like it should have been her big hit. When she got behind a keyboard for ballad I Told You Everything, the results were just as powerful.
An affecting cover of Sinead O’Connor’s Black Boys On Mopeds was introduced with a hesitant political statement. “We have Trump, you have Brexit, it’s all the same,” she said. “In these difficult days, I think about my son and the future, that’s my job.”
Van Etten’s glorious performance was a combination of grit and vulnerability. Her cult status is surely set to cross into stardom before long.
