Photo by Andy Sears
by Victoria King
While most will tell you not to judge a book by its cover, the cover of Sharon Van Etten’s latest release is the picture that tells a thousand words. But all banal maxims aside, Are We There is anything but boring, repetitive, or cliché – in fact, she describes this record as her most personal and current release yet (and it shows).
She explains that the cover of the new album conveys several of the themes that permeate throughout her latest release – motion and movement, change, and the interplay between lightness and darkness. The cover of Are We There is a photograph of Sharon’s good friend Rebecca, taken shortly before she’d moved to Indiana to get married and settle down. Sharon, on the other hand, was headed to New York to pursue music.
Sharon describes Are We There (her fourth full length release) as extremely autobiographical and her “heaviest” album yet. “Not heavy sonically,” she told Stylus. “I consciously wanted it to be wide and open . . . Every other record has been a reflection of the past and having some perspective. In this one I’m still in it, I’m still figuring it out, I’m still asking some questions. ”
Her previous release, Tramp, was critically acclaimed and its success secured her name in the music scene. That album featured several big names and music types, for example Aaron Dessner (the National) as the producer. Sharon said that she’s grateful for the record and everyone that worked on it, though she ended up questioning why audiences were really interested in her music.
“So many people would ask me about the National,” she confides. “[They asked] more about people than content and songwriting . . . I was like, ‘I’m going to prove it to myself that I write strong songs and I don’t need these people with their big names to make the song what it is.’ They helped it a lot the but the bottom line was that I wrote these songs and I wanted to prove it to myself that I could do it myself.”
Van Etten wrote Are We There while touring – on the road, before sound check, and in the van. Over time, she realized that her collection of new writings was the beginnings of a new album – a very personal one that would detail her struggles to balance having a personal life and a career as a professional musician. While home in New York between tours, Etten would experiment in a new practice space where she would go and write and be loud.
“I ran around like a crazy person in a music playground trying everything with nobody around, no filter.”
“I’m not a technical person,” she admits. “I’m very ‘from the heart and vibe and feel.’ I don’t know what key I’m playing in, I don’t know what time signature I’m playing in. But for me it’s demonstrating and learning how to show emotions and learning to communicate in a different way.” She pulled these new materials together and got her band working and recording. On this release, she’s the producer.
“I’m asking myself after ten years of trying to pursue music, is this really the right thing?” she wonders. “Have I put my energy into the wrong thing, because I could have been writing all this time without trying to perform. Now I don’t really have much of a life, you know? . . . It’s like I chose a different path,” Sharon references the front photograph and her friend’s choice. “My work, my music is just as important to me as having love. The irony is that I write about it all the time and I don’t have it.” She laughs, “So that’s what’s heavy.”
Though she might sound unsure, the powers of the cosmos (or whatever you’d like to call it) have pulled together all sorts of crazy coincidences, influences and concepts in an organic fashion for Are We There that might suggest this album was meant to be. For example, the role of French filmmaker Agnes Varda.
Rebecca and Sharon sent letters to stay in touch after Rebecca moved away. In one of her letters to Etten, she included a photo of a woman who she thought looked like Etten. The photograph withstood ten years in Etten’s New York apartment, subjected to the bipolar seasons and temperature fluctuations that evade New York’s high rises. Etten eventually passed off the aging photograph to a friend, asking him to preserve it. This friend recognized the face of Etten’s mysterious doppelganger as iconic French filmmaker Agnes Varda.
After learning about her identity and longstanding career in film and art, Etten found herself sincerely relating to Varda’s work, “being a strong woman and talking about it and having a career, but having it being centered around feminism. I felt like it was a really important part of the story for this record.” The first music video for the first single off the album “Taking Chance” is inspired by Varda’s film Cléo from 5 to 7. Sharon laughs, “Every now and then when something like that happens I feel like it’s the universe telling me I’m doing the right thing.”
If you’ve been wondering (as I was before speaking to her) if ‘Are We There’ is intentionally meant to be vague, the answer is yes. “I wanted it to have many meanings and open and undefined in a way . . . [‘There’] is wherever you truly want to be, in the right place or space just where you want to be. It’s a good question to ask yourself: are you doing everything you want to be doing?”
Sharon Van Etten will be headlining the Big Blue Stage for the Winnipeg Folk Festival on Sunday, July 13. For more festival details, you can check out winnipegfolkfestival.ca