Sharon Van Etten

New York's singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten debuted with the spare, acoustic, folkish Because I Was in Love (2009). Her confessional style blossomed on the rock-tinged mini-album Epic (2010), ostensibly a concept about on escaping from an abusive relationship, ranging from the girlgroup-influenced ditty One Day to the tormented harmonium-driven DsharpG, and centering on the passionate Love More.

Tramp (Jagjaguwar, 2012) boasts the anthemic Patti Smith-esque crescendo Serpents, the acid, agonizing Warsaw, the country-ish lament We Are Fine and the tender, waltzing Leonard.

The songs of Are We There (2014) achieve an impeccable balance between being mature and being personal. If Nothing Will Change, halfway between torch-ballad and country paean, is in line with her old style, songs like Afraid of Nothing, which sounds like a religious hymn but it is wrapped in orchestral neurosis, and Taking Chances, that flirts with downtempo trip-hop, display bigger ambitions. The anthemic saxophone-enhanced waltzing crescendo Tarifa could have been in Bob Dylan's Street Legal. Her best vocal performance is the tense vibrato, coupled with bolero-tinged drumming and a soaring organ, in Your Love Is Killing Me. She howls You Know Well against an oneiric-psychedelic instrumental background. A syncopated electronic beat surfaces in Our Love and it's not a nice surprise. Leftovers from the same recording sessions surfaced on the EP I Don't Want to Let You Down (2015).

Remind Me Tomorrow (Jagjaguwar, 2019) adopted the electronic arrangements that were hinted at on the previous album. The disco ditty Comeback Kid sounds like a collaboration between Patti Smith and Giorgio Moroder. Her soul still inhabits these creatures but they are clearly from another planet: Seventeen is generic dance-pop with a hard beat, Jupiter 4 is a slow six-minute atmospheric ballad over burbling electronica, etc. She sounds more credible in the slow country dance I Told You Everything. There are two well-executed compromises between the old austere style and the new extroverted one: the melody of You Shadow is reminiscent of Phil Spector's girl-groups, save the booming organ-driven arrangement, and the slightly insane and sinister Memorial Day is drenched in swampy and jazzy soundscape.

Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen collaborated on the single Like I Used To (2021), produced by John Congleton.

Weíve Been Going About This All Wrong (2022), produced by Daniel Knowles, contains the danceable and catchy Mistakes, the quasi-psychedelic bolero Darkness Fades and the catatonic lament Home to Me next to more traditional country melodramas like Anything and Come Back. It's a minor work with many unfocused songs.