Sharon Van Etten, Mike Visser, Matthew Varvil
The Bushwick Starr
August 8, 2010

In Love More, a single released earlier this year, Sharon Van Etten has crafted one of the most powerful slow songs of this year. Her voice looms over a heaving harmonium and its wistful sadness, protruding from a soundscape of delayed, reverb-frosted guitar and unhurried bass drum, makes it sound as if she sings from a place in the shadows.

I was so goddamn excited to listen, eyes closed, to the wavy sound of the hand pumped organ open the tune live; to hear Van Etten’s shy yowl layer on top the words, “Chained to the wall of our room, yeah you chained me like a dog in our room.” The background vocal harmonies would come in thick and low. I pictured the scenario all Saturday while doing laundry, changing the kitty litter and cleaning the hamster cage, drinking beer and trying to work on a sample of short story fiction for graduate school applications. Van Etten would stand in the dark next to the spotlight on a stage that was elevated just a step or two. Her voice, I imagined, had to emerge from the darkness, so that there was no light mixed with the words, “She made me love, she made me love, she made me love more.” My creative efforts grew futile as the tambourine’s remote echo kept going for hours in the background, my scribbling turning into “And she took the time to believe and to believe in what she said. She made me love, she made me love, she made me love more.” Eventually I started producing my own extra verses as the beers went down but I’ll spare you the outcome.

Have you ever seen The Big Lebowski ? “Love More” was going to be the rug that really ties the room together. As it was, Van Etten did not play it. Nor did she play the harmonium and there was no slow bass drum or even a tambourine. And during the intermission before Reggie Watts’ headlining gig I left, ignoring to even capitalize on the “PBR + Shot $4 Special” in the tiny bar.

But let’s take things from the beginning. On 207 Starr Street between Flushing and Dekalb avenues, The Bushwick Starr was so inconspicuously located that I walked past it twice, taking ganders through the open gate of an auto shop down the street from which came the urgent, thumping pulse of meringue music. The mechanics inside eyed me back tiredly the first time but didn’t bother the second. Outside a cafe on the street corner sat a girl in a flower-patterned skirt whose left forearm was circled by two tattoos in the shape of black ribbons. She smiled shyly mid-bite of a panini.

After finding the gray metal door with an 8" x 10" note reading The Bushwick Starr and climbing steep stairs, I waited with about ten people until 7:45 pm when the doors opened. The show was scheduled to commence at 8 but didn’t really begin until 8:40. It didn’t matter too much because of the lovely terrace and its view of a Manhattan colored pink by twilight. The scenery went well with a Blue Moon (the only choice except for Pabst Blue Ribbon). Inside, the stereo was offered The Clash and Arcade Fire.

Matthew Varvil opened the night singing and playing banjo, backed by a guitarist with the delay set a smudge too high and a shredding standup bassist who was turned down too low. Varvil wanted much and cried his heart out. The song arrangements were tight despite the band only having rehearsed for two days prior to the show. However, Varvil’s unduly nasal voice took away from the overall impression. Before playing a fast-paced folksong, he revealed that it “was written for me by a beautiful pregnant lady in Texas,” but quickly pointed out that he was not the father making the 45 or so people laugh.

Second up was Mike Visser billed as Strings. He sang in a loud and high-pitched voice that resonated through his whole body from head to flip flop-adorned feet while picking and strumming a hollow body electric guitar for accompaniment. Although Visser had clearly taken his singing lessons, I thought his Thom Yorke emulation was a bit heavy. The high point came in a falsetto version of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love.” Visser didn’t speak much between songs, but midway through the set Varvil interrupted, amusingly plugging his recordings that were described as “four years old and really cokey.” Varvil encouraged people to find him in the bar before giving notice that he was wearing a charm to protect him against mental illness. I considered making him an offer for it.

Turns out Van Etten was “the girl with the panini” along with the ribbon tattoos. She was shy on stage, making awkward but charming jokes about feeling weird in a skirt and asking the audience how the PBR was, saying reminded her of high school and that tall boy cans would have reminded her of college.

Van Etten performed mostly new songs and I don’t know the names of them. From the first song, during which she sang over straightforward, poppy guitar strum, my only notes read, “Such a fucking beautiful voice.”

Before playing “Save Yourself,” she explained that it was written in an apartment in the same neighborhood as the venue, adding that she doesn’t miss it very much because she doesn’t “have to wake up every morning and smell chicken.” The song really fit the melancholy of Van Etten’s voice, which turned sharp and almost bitter at the chorus: “Don’t you think I know you’re only trying to save yourself.”

Although Van Etten’s voice was superb live, something was lost without the patient and melancholic arrangements that accompany it on record. Her guitar strumming was straightforward to the level of being simplistic, making the songs a bit colorless at times.

So when she stopped playing after merely seven songs of which none were “Love More” and The Clash came on the speakers again, I left. A hipster kid sat outside the closed auto shop playing a mandolin. He was pretty good so I gave him thumbs up as I walked down Starr Street toward the L train. Getting on the subway, I wished the Brooklyn indie scene was a little bit more jammy or had some of the jamband scene’s collaborative spirit: if Varvil would have stopped singing, just played banjo and brought his band on stage plus Visser on rhythm guitar and backup vocals and Van Etten singing – they could have had a pretty cool thing going. And why not throw in the merengue beats for drums and the mandolin kid, too? The three tired-eyed mechanics could stand in the background with tambourines or something, I envisioned.

When I got home after walking through the trash-littered streets of the Bronx just after midnight, I drank a couple of beers and lied down on my bed with the laptop on my belly. I tried to write a couple of paragraphs for the fiction sample but realized I was too drunk. So I put on my headphones and listened to “Love More” a few more times before falling asleep.