Sharon Van Etten's sixth album - We've Been Going About This All Wrong - was released yesterday with no pre-singles, with the American songwriter and wanting fans to listen to the album as a whole.
Sharon spoke to Charlotte Ryan about the creation of her new album, its unconventional release and motherhood.
Sharon Van Etten Photo: Michael Schmelling
Charlotte Ryan: Do you think your song writing or your perspective on song writing has changed since you became a mother?
Sharon Van Etten: Back in the day, I used to write more about heartbreak and relationships and having hindsight from things that have already happened. But now I feel like I am looking more ahead, and from the perspective of being in a good place.
But still doesn't mean you're not wistful or hopeful of something but afraid of somethings, and I just feel like I look so much further out than I would have had back then.
The way you are releasing (the album) is not traditional, we don't get singles - tell me about this album, what you want to say and why are you doing it in an untraditional sense?
There are a lot of layers, but I think after writing and collaborating with my bandmates over the last two years and learning how to work out of my studio, that I had finished before lockdown hit, I realised that I wanted to protect the songs and salvage the tracks that I had made during that time and I wanted people to experience that with me.
I wanted them to experience that as a journey, experience it as a whole, listening from beginning to end of the album. That's not dictated to them by singles that are released ahead of the album where they are spoon-fed what other people think will be the hits.
I wanted the fan of the album to be able to connect with it in their own way and find those songs that speak to them personally. It's a very single-driven world right now and I appreciate those that just want to release a song here or there, and that's how they work.
But for me, I still believe in the album and the spirit of sharing it in that way that I grew up with. Sitting down with friends, holding a physical album, reading the lyrics, and having the experience that the artist intended. I am hoping that the fans that have been with me for so long appreciate the sentiment.
The art is really an emotional rollercoaster and I feel like I try to start it hopeful. It's not necessarily a timeline of events but it does represent the last two years and the ups and downs I had personally.
I tried to represent not only my internal struggles but the state of the world, of the angst that everyone felt and this collective weight, this worldwide trauma that we were all experiencing, through the eyes of the mother that's supposed to be optimistic for her child.
There is some light in there and I feel like the narrative is more about getting through all those hard times and being able to reflect on the times and being able to get past them.
There are bits of these new songs that seem quite mournful, but then your voice takes us into this powerful thing. When I was listening to it, I went from being despaired to elated.
Every song is a very specific feeling and I wanted to make sure that every transition you took a turn. From the key to the tempo to the content, I wanted to make sure that every time a song came on, you felt something different.
What sort of head space were you in when you wrote the album?
I started writing most of these songs at the top of 2020. We had just moved to Los Angeles in 2019 and I had finished building the studio in January 2020 and then Covid hit a couple of months later and I started writing during lockdown.
My headspace was all over the place. There were days of feeling out of control and pretty helpless and then there were days of appreciating the simpler things. And there were days when I was more reflective of my child, my relationship, what that means in the future.
I think like many people I struggled with coping mechanisms during lockdown and having to be called out and calling myself out on the ways that were getting me through in the moment and trying to see the silver linings in being home and feeling directly connected to my family while still being so isolated from the rest of the world.
That's what I wanted to capture and share with people is this chapter of my life that we all are somehow connected upon.
Would you say that your new album is positive enlightening?
I think I always have a foot in the door. I want it to be hopeful.
But I think hopefully after the last two years we are all rethinking a lot of things - how we work, how we connect, how we try new things, how we engage not only with our friends and family but also the people that we work with.
I have a lot of thinking to do about how I want to pursue music and how I want to engage with fans and how I want to perform shows and how I want to include my band.
I hope all the changes that we all said we wanted to do or were going to do, stick after we get through the next hump, and then the next hump and then the next hump because things need to change in so many directions, in so many ways that I hope we do that and figure it out.
