Long time, no Sarah on AudioVole. That’s changing right…now! She would normally be excited to write a funny little blurb here but all of the listening to Sharon Van Etten has made “excitement” seem like an unworthy emotion available only to those who have never experienced heartbreak. And tweens. Anyway, read what she has to say about SVE’s new album, Tramp, and come back tomorrow to get Zach Evan’s take.
Stream Tramp over on NPR.
Sharon Van Etten – “Serpents”
From: Sarah Braunstein
To: Zach Evans
Hey, Zach. Hope your 2012 has been a happy one so far because it’s about to be balanced out by some sad-sounding stuff. And so we’ll jump right in.
Sharon Van Etten is an artist on the move. She’s so much in motion that, until recently, she didn’t have a permanent address and was relying on good friends for their couches and her car for its closet-like storage capacity. Because of a massive touring schedule, Van Etten didn’t need a home and she wrote most of the material on her new album, Tramp (out 2/7 on Jagjaguwar), in her band’s tour van: headphones on, hooked up to a MIDI keyboard so she could write melodies without disturbing her bandmates. Beyond her courteousness, this bit of trivia speaks to Van Etten’s creative process and working style. On her first two albums — 2009’s Because I Was In Love and 2010’s Epic — SVE was the sole proprietor of her music and sound. On those two records, the production is spare, the lyrics are immediate and hatched from personal pains, and the instrumentation beyond Van Etten’s voice is kept to a minimum: guitar, layers of harmonies, and a splash of percussion.
I feel safe saying that for anyone who has heard a Van Etten track, her vocal talent is obvious. She manages to combine vulnerability, confidence, vitality, and total heartbreak with just a few words and melodies (see “Love More” as an example). Though I’ve yet to hear an SVE track that I don’t think is compelling and beautiful after just one listen, her music at times borders on becoming uncomfortably personal or just too blatantly low. I spent a whole lot of time listening to Epic in 2010 and — although I don’t regret one moment of it — that’s the same as me saying I spent a lot of time down in the profoundly sad yet alluring dumps.
Enter Aaron Dessner. We know this name because we love listening to The National and brooding and thinking about how we should probably begin wearing dapper suits on a regular basis. Dessner is the man responsible for the production on Van Etten’s Tramp and suffice it to say he’s left his mark. I mean that in a really good way. Dessner hasn’t totally transformed Van Etten’s sound. The vocals kick in 22 seconds into the album’s opening track, “Warsaw,” and remain the focal point for the duration of the record. But Dessner does play structural engineer to SVE’s role as architect, and he’s done a good, thorough job identifying melodies, instruments, and moments in SVE’s material that require reinforcement. Tramp is Van Etten’s first record to be totally load bearing. First point of evidence is the album’s first single, “Serpents,” which happily features another lady I love, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak. This is first time you can just about fucking rock out to an SVE song and I’m pretty sure this sentiment will be fully realized at her live show (which I will eagerly attend in Chicago).
Zach, you mentioned before that you haven’t spent much time listening to SVE’s past albums, which is kind of cool because I almost feel like I know too much to objectively evaluate her work. What do you think of Tramp and all its melancholia? Does the album make you want to do some crate-digging for her first two records or are you not much for wallowing in exquisite sorrow like me?
“Take my hand and squeeze / say I’m all right”
Sarah
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