![]() ![]() The Bad: Sure, purists of her more folksy sounds may feel left out - or perhaps even put off - but it’s hard to imagine anyone listening to, say, “Malibu”, with its meditative piano work and that sing-speak falsetto of hers, and saying, “Where’s Sharon?” No, the smartest thing about her leap forward is that she carries the rope with her at all times, offering trinkets or echoes to her past, perhaps in an effort to keep things in perspective … but only to a point. Van Etten isn’t the same person she was in 2014, and while too many songwriters wave that flag around, she earns it - staff and all. On “Memorial Day”, she writhes around in trip-hop isolation on magnum opus “Jupiter 4”, she spawns gills and drowns in those titular synths and on “Seventeen”, she relishes the kind of new wave that gives insomniacs reason to kick the Ambien. Again, it all goes back to those “lost” years. “Whenever I got to the point where I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere in what I was writing,” she told Meredith, “I would put down the guitar and play anything else.” No kidding. ![]() In her latest round of interviews, particularly her recent spot on Kyle Meredith With…, Van Etten’s conceit behind Remind Me Tomorrow boils down to the same narrative: She didn’t just want to do something different she needed to do something different. “Too much has changed,” Van Etten ominously sings on early gem “No One’s Easy to Love”, which sounds as if she’s singing from aboard a spaceship in one of the earlier seasons of The X-Files. That’s the point, though. It’s her OK Computer if you want to get frank. ![]() This isn’t so much an evolution, but a complete restructuring of Van Etten’s sound. Prior to recording, she sent him all sorts of influences or sounds she was feeling at the time - ranging from Suicide to Portishead to Nick Cave’s heartbreaking last record, 2016’s The Skeleton Tree - and he clearly designed a fitting blueprint. The Good: Linking up with producer John Congleton, the Hakeem Olajuwon of engineers, was a wise choice for Van Etten. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |