Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory - Sharon Van Etten: Review
Review by Lavender:
Sharon Van Etten is a singer-songwriter who has been operating since the late 2000s. She eventually rounded into a full-on critical darling with her 3rd and 4th albums Tramp and Are We There a few years later. Following those, she took a full 5-year break from studio albums to focus on passions outside of music. While the two records she's released since then weren't met with quite as much acclaim, I've still enjoyed them both, which had me excited for this new project. This album, her seventh, is a shift towards a more rock-oriented sound for which she recruited the services of a three-piece band called The Attachment Theory.
There's two singles that had me pretty excited for this record and they both pop up in the first 4 songs. "Afterlife" was the lead single and I like it quite a bit. I love the way the full array of instrumentation is hidden until just the right moment, highlighting just how great the chorus is. I also really enjoyed "Trouble" the third single. I love the way it weaves slowly through the verses with these ambient synths and an absolutely irresistible bassline laced underneath. Sharon is absolutely in vintage form vocally as well and she pays it all off with beautiful melodies on the hook.
Unfortunately, those two singles are the good half of a mixed opening run for the album. Opener "Live Forever" is a spacey cut with distant backing vocals and synth noodling all wrapped up in this steady drum beat. Though some of the soundplay is interesting I don't actually love the tune itself and the heartland rock eruption it has in the second half never really feel earned. There's also "Idiot Box" which feels ALARMINGLY on the nose in its messaging given that it's Sharon Van Etten writing and singing it. Once again it builds gradually in this heartland-rocky style to an eventual eruption that doesn't particularly do much for me.
Other tracks on the album that I'm not crazy about share similar issues. "Something Ain't Right" is another track where the lyrics seem painfully literal for Sharon. It has this Belle & Sebastian-type sound with layered vocals that stands out in a really strange way from the more rock and roll sound of the rest of the album. This is also where the middle single "Southern Life" pops up. It's a track that still makes absolutely no impression on me and sounds even more innocuous within the tracklist than it originally did as a single.
But there are also deep cuts here that I enjoy. "Indio" is one of the album's more propulsive songs with fluttering drums and a hook that's simple but impressively catchy. It's hilarious how much it sounds like a Beach Bunny song but with Sharon Van Etten singing it. I wouldn't have predicted it but the results are great. Similarly with "I Can't Imagine" you get a killer bassline and bouncy drums right out of the gate. It's a straight-up banger that doesn't really require too much analysis for me to tell you why it's good, just listen to it.
The album also ends with a pair of 6-minute tracks and, unsurprisingly, I'm split on them. The first is "Fading Beauty" a real subtle track instrumentally with the kind of poetically obscured lyricism I'm more used to from Sharon. I do appreciate that the track is committed to wandering through it's chilling expanse and as it goes on the keys fluttering in the distance behind Sharon's singing create a distinctly eerie vibe that I like a lot. That contrasts with the closer "I Want You Here" which, to its credit, features the most dramatic vocal performance on the record, Sharon is belting over these booming drums and it gives a lot of convincing weight to the cries of "I want you here." Unfortunately, the song plods along for a really long time without refrains that are nearly interesting enough to hold up. Eventually, it lands on a solid finale, but getting there is always exhausting.
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory doesn't deliver the charm I've come to expect from Sharon, but the reasons why are a surprise. The extra instrumentation she's working with never swallows her voice or lyricism, in fact I think it's largely responsible for many of the best moments on the record. Sadly it's the songs themselves that suffer from a distinct shallowness, especially when compared to Sharon's previous records where songwriting was a huge strength. This record will hardly do anything to dampen my excitement for whatever Sharon does next, but I think it's an experiment outside the vein of her typical style that came up shorter than the sum of its parts. 5.5/10
For more singer-songwriter music check out my review of jasmine.4.t's You Are The Morning
