Sharon Van Etten: Don’t Look Back Yet
photo: Susu Laroche
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Sharon Van Etten was deep into rehearsals for a tour supporting her 2022 studio album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, when she unexpectedly uttered the “J word.”
“It was the first time we were all in the same room together, and I decided that, instead of doing the normal rehearsal-space thing that everybody does to get ready for a tour, I would make it more like band camp, where we could connect with each other,” the now 44-year-old singer-songwriter says of a trip she took with her touring group three years ago. “We found a house in the Yucca Valley desert that was part of a compound, where there’s also a studio and a couple of trailers. And at the end of the week, I was really tired of hearing my songs over and over. We were facing each other in the round so that we could see each other and communicate. I asked if we could take a break and, when we came back, if we could just jam. I always make a joke about that word because it has all these negative connotations to it.”
Remembering that she is chatting with Relix, Van Etten pauses and sheepishly laughs, then continues to describe the idyllic setting, which aided in her ability to loosen up and improvise with her bandmates. “We would have breakfast together every morning, and then we would play,” she says. “We’d break for lunch, and then we would play until dinner—we’d make dinner together and watch the yellowjackets and just reconnect as people. As we were honing the sound of the synths, drums, guitars and beats—the standard band setup—we were really honing this new sound.”
Energized by the experience, after wrapping up a run of shows with Angel Olsen and Julien Baker in 2022, Van Etten and her group returned to the Yucca Valley space in early 2023 for another week of writing that yielded 10-15 songs. Motivated by the results, they then moved the party to 64Sound in Los Angeles for another four days of recording.
“I was like, ‘Let’s just keep capturing, not overthink everything and see what the overall world looks like,’” she says.
That time at “band camp,” and the new sound that Van Etten zeroed in on, ended up serving as a compass for both her most recent album, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, and her current creative era as part of a tried-and-true ensemble. The new release is Van Etten’s seventh full-length set, yet it marks the first time she has written and recorded with her combo, The Attachment Theory—Jorge Balbi (drums, machines), Devra Hoff (bass, vocals) and Teeny Lieberson (synth, piano, guitar, vocals). Released on Jagjaguwar in February, it also captures that charged, jam forward spirit The Attachment Theory first explored during their Yucca Valley getaway.
As she is tracing her latest left turn, Van Etten is sitting at a wooden kitchen table in Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood on a rainy December morning. Though she grew up in New Jersey, in the shadow of New York City, Van Etten was closely associated with the Brooklyn indie-rock scene for much of her career. However, just before the global pandemic, she relocated to Los Angeles with her partner, music manager and onetime touring drummer Zeke Hutchins, and their young son, so she’s currently camped out in a former roommate’s brownstone for a few days. In addition to letting her catch up with an old friend, who now runs a nearby café, it’s a more comfortable way for her to explain the natural turn of events that led to starting a new band while already in her 40s. (One rule: Please take your shoes off.)
The roots of The Attachment Theory stretch back to Van Etten’s 2019 set, Remind Me Tomorrow, which was crafted during a transitional period while Van Etten was pregnant with her first child, venturing into acting and studying to get a degree in psychology. “She was just at a point where she wanted to do something completely different, and maybe I was the only person she talked to who got really excited when she mentioned [these] influences,” producer John Congleton told Relix at the time. “Suicide is one of my favorite bands; I’m a massive Nick Cave fan and have been for years.”
For the record’s accompanying run, she brought in Hoff and bassist/synth player Charley Damski, who contributed to the writing sessions for her new release before being called away to work with Lana Del Rey. Around that time, she also hired drummer Balbi; Lieberson, who had run in similar circles with Van Etten for years, joined in during their more recent writing sessions.
“We brought her on tour for We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, but I knew her from my early New York days, from Here We Go Magic, TEEN and her own moniker, Lou Tides,” Van Etten says. “So that is the core of the band, and we just brought on a new musician for the upcoming tour, Shanna Polley, who goes by Snake, to fill Charley’s role.”
As they started getting into the meat of the record, the musicians all took a trip to see The Cure, whose expansive-yet authentic live show left an indelible mark on their outlook.
“Robert [Smith] is such a great performer—so sweet and shy, even with all the years behind him. That set the stage, but based on the two songs we already wrote, I knew that it was going to be very synth/ bass driven and beat driven,” Van Etten says. “I knew that I wanted to just let go and be more of a singer and see what happens. I play a little bit of synth still and some guitar, like on ‘Idiot Box,’ but I was trying to be more of a guide and play with the song structures—exploring where, melodically, things can go. My band members have more of a jazz background, so their way of speaking about music is really interesting to me—talking about different voicings and how to subvert the major things. When I hear it in context, I understand that these are things that I wouldn’t do, so they added so much to the process.”
All the players contributed in different ways. Van Etten says that she tends to write “very stream of consciously,” so that she can focus on the melody first. But then, naturally, fresh sounds, consonants, words and phrases start to emerge.
“I’ll be singing about things I didn’t even realize were up here,” she says, pointing upward to her head. “So one of the songs, ‘Live Forever,’ we wrote in one sitting, front to back, after Dev and I went for a walk. I was talking about this article I read on anti-aging technology—these experiments done on mice—and how they figured out how to replicate cells and regenerate cells to reverse the aging process. They say that if you take it too early, then it has the opposite effect. And I laughed because I immediately thought of Death Becomes Her. It was one of those things where we started philosophically saying, ‘Would you do that?’ We started to think, ‘Why would you, especially given the state of the world, want to stick around to see what happens?’”
She takes a sip of water and chuckles to herself, “Really lighthearted conversations, but those things would naturally come out based on conversations that I had with the band. And so a lot of the songs are less about my relationships and more about what we were all going through. Those two weeks of writing, I wasn’t trying to edit in the moment. When you have the creative drive to keep going, when that muse is there, it’s like, ‘Don’t look back yet—look back when that moment is gone.’ That gives you a bit more perspective and distance from it. We’ll see what makes sense together, and we’ll finish the songs and edit the form even more—go into the lyrics a bit more. But I want to wait until we know we have a collection of songs that make sense together.”
As the band jammed together, they ended up crafting “I Can’t Imagine” and “Southern Life’” in about an hour. The latter tune digs into Van Etten’s relationship with the Southeast; her partner is from North Carolina, and she frequently visits the region. She also lived in Murfreesboro, Tenn., for several years, initially as a college student, slinging coffee and inching her way into the music industry.
“When we first wrote that song, I only had a couple of lines,” she says. “And as I was working on lyrics, I shared them with Devra, who also helped me finish them. It was the first time I’d shown someone lyrics in the writing process and said, ‘What does this make you feel? How do you think people will interpret this?’ And Dev was so funny. She was like, ‘People are gonna think you hate the South. Are you gonna be OK with that?’ But the song is actually not so much about being in the South. It’s really more about having this other juxtaposition of an idea and how you can coexist with very different mindsets. I’ve visited the South enough to know that you have to be able to coexist with people who don’t have the same belief systems as you do. If there’s anything that we’ve learned in the last few years, it’s that it’s a necessity to not have major conflict, and it’s hard because, even when you deeply don’t believe in those ideologies, you still have to figure out a way to coexist.”
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In September 2019, Van Etten and her family relocated to Los Angeles, at a time when many in her creative community were considering a similar move. However, about six months later, the pandemic hit, and the longtime East Coaster found herself sheltering in place in more ways than one.
“I was trying to figure out ways to diversify my career, do more score work, get more into co-writing and maybe acting, but that is still not the number one thing,” she says of her initial reasons to veer west. “So we moved to LA, and I felt like, “Go, go, go,” but the pull of the energy of LA—everyone’s just trying to convince you to chill. Then COVID hit, and the world forced us to chill. All the neighbors were home. So I got to experience LA in the best way because anyone that would have been traveling or over-working, they were home and nesting and nurturing their communities. So we got to know everybody in our neighborhood during the first six months we were there, and every musician that I’d ever worked with in LA was home. There was a lot of collaboration, and I ended up forming what I call my ‘wrecking crew,’ even though we were isolated. I could send songs out to other people, and they would help me flesh them out. And when it got to a place where we could all be in a room together again, I was constantly workshopping other people’s songs. So even though it took me probably a year or two to get my footing there, I found this circle that was very nurturing, and I did a lot of writing with other people for other projects, more so there than here [in New York].”
At the time, Van Etten’s son was around 3. After spending the entire previous year on the road touring a record, she tried to make the best of the strange-and-impactful era, unpacking boxes and setting up her new house. She also made the most of her garage studio, leaning into a new workflow.
“I would call friends for advice when something wasn’t working,” she says. “In that way, I learned how to work more in a studio environment because, before then, I would always go to somebody else’s place or have a single-mic setup. But it was the first time I had a very humble studio where I could get usable tracks to bring somewhere else to build upon.”
She admits that the period could be isolating and that “everybody battled some darkness during that time, for sure,” but it also turned out to be a fertile, creative moment.
“It’s hard to wear more than one hat— but [it’s important] to just switch it up every now and then and remind yourself that you’re capable of just showing up as a guitar player for a random session,” she says. “Once I was like, ‘Oh, I can still do this,’ I was able to think of melodies on a guitar and support somebody in this way that I sometimes forget I’m capable of. Even making a mistake guides you because you don’t know it’s a mistake until you try it. Also, you gotta be able to say no sometimes, and that informs it all.”
As the world started to reopen, Van Etten began tapping into her new community and exploring other creative avenues.
“It’s healthy to pivot and just sharpen another tool because it can only inform how you do it, right?” she says. “I’m working with this band, She Keeps Bees. The first time they asked me to produce something, for them, I’d never been in that chair before for someone other than me. And you have to be able to look at somebody else’s work and hear what it is they want to do and help guide them, stay on course, and try to not let your ego get in the way of what you think you want it to be for them. You need to really hear their ideas and hold them accountable. It’s not about pushing yourself upon them. It’s similar to the score work I’ve done. I’ll just get a call, and it’s nice to really be able to answer that call, hear someone say, ‘I need a voice on this,’ and show up as a singer. They have all of the music, and now all we need is a melody. It’s like a game show.”
Van Etten continued to work on her own music, too, and released the Daniel Knowles-produced LP We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong—the title was inspired by watching the ‘90s classic The Sandlot with her son on repeat. The LP was well received by critics and spawned several singles. Yet, by deciding to switch things up this time around and involve her group from the ground up, Van Etten believes she’s circling back to the raw, exposed style that colored her earliest recordings.
“There’s a vulnerability in sharing the writing process with each other—not singing complete gibberish, trusting friends and collaborators in a new way,” she says. “It’s just the act itself—we’re all showing up and feeling vulnerable, but we’re all showing up because we love each other, and we want to make music together. Although these songs aren’t like my first record, where I was this broken little girl singing about my love life, I think of this as the adult version of that. I’m the grown-up version of that person— thinking more about the world, the bigger ideas, mortality. As we’re getting older, our parents are aging. Our kids are growing up. There’s a vulnerability now, learning how to talk about the environment we are in while still keeping it general enough for people to connect with it.”
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Despite rubbing up against some jamband creative techniques and stacking her group with jazz-trained players, Van Etten decided not to add her new songs into her live repertoire until after she finished Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory. She’s excited about how the band has been gelling in concert though, citing a recent gig opening for Mitski at Hollywood Bowl and an intimate club date at Los Angeles’ Viper Room.
“I missed that feeling of being in a club,” she says. “It’s sweaty and kind of gross. But also, it took me back to my club days, and I wanted to hear the band in that setting. It was so fun.”
Looking ahead, she’s eager to present a full-band feel at her upcoming 2025 shows. She is also quick to note that, despite a new billing, she still plans to dig into her back catalog on the road.
“I feel like it’s a continuation of everything I’ve ever done, except I’ve had fans write to me asking, ‘You’re gonna play your old stuff, right?’ And, yes, I am—I’m not gonna do that to you,” she says. “It’s still all the same path of how I’ve done music until now. Maybe we’ll reinvent some of those older songs with this palette that we have to create some new versions of them. It’ll be more revisiting the older songs. We’re very focused.”
Van Etten already has some experience tweaking her music. She did a jazz-trio rendition of some of her originals for her friend’s fashion brand The Academy in New York in 2023, and she offered a bluesy, reworked spin on her tune “Seventeen” with Norah Jones and guitarist Sam Cohen in 2020.
“I’m down for anything—I love all genres—but I think I have to get over that imposter syndrome that I don’t belong here,” she says. “I want to work more with Norah and Sam—just find new ways to make music together because I think that their sound has just been really inspiring to me and I want to follow that. And I still want to make a jazz record or a country record—it could be called Sharon Carpenter and it’s all Karen Carpenter songs.”
She laughs audibly and then muses to herself: “Or do I wait until I can’t rock out anymore, like in a T-shirt and jeans, and I’m sprawled across the piano just doing cover versions of all my favorite songs, but as jazz standards? You wanna be like Willie Nelson on the road at 91. There’s no shame in having a book of lyrics on stage when you have hundreds of songs. Anyone that shames anyone who’s still crushing it on stage, I’ll point my finger at you.”
More immediately, she is pumped to play a few new places in some of the areas she’s previously called home. “My family is very excited that I’m headlining my first New Jersey show,” she says, just prior to her February date in Asbury Park, N.J. “I’ve never played a show at the Stone Pony, so my parents are very happy about that. I’ve never played Brooklyn Steel before, but I’ve gone to shows there, and the people that run it are really sweet. It’s a real mile marker now because I was just talking to my dad, and he was like, ‘Not Bowery Ballroom? I thought that was your favorite venue?’ And I was like, ‘Well, it was, but I have to figure out ways to try new things and also experiment with where I play in New York.’ If I go further and further north in Manhattan, then I’m no longer playing to New Yorkers. I’m excited about it all. I miss Brooklyn, and I still love New York even though I don’t live here anymore. The Royal Albert Hall in London will also be pretty crazy. That’s definitely a legendary space in my family.”
And, despite still learning how to present her newest batch of material for her audiences, Van Etten is already thinking ahead to her next album. “We have three days to rehearse before our tour,” she says. “But I do want to go back in and write with the band and find new ways to make music together because I think that the sound has just been really inspiring to me. I want to follow that.”
