Les Nuits #2014: Sharon Van Etten

(© Dusdin Condren)

For her last album, she called in Aaron Dessner of the National; for the open veins of the break-up album Are We There, however, Sharon Van Etten needed no outside assistance. “I took my training wheels off.”

"Damn, I can’t find it anywhere.” Sharon Van Etten is looking for the photograph of Agnès Varda that hung for years on the wall of her New York apartment, but her smartphone lets her down. It was by chance that the French photographer and film-maker, who helped shape the French New Wave, came into the life of the 33-year-old singer-songwriter with the most heartrending voice in indie rock since PJ Harvey; now Varda is on display in the artwork for Are We There.

“A friend of mine – Rebekah, she is on the album cover, the first picture I took for a photography course – thought I looked like Varda, when I still had that kind of bowl cut. She sent me that photograph, with a letter on the back – we kept each other informed about our personal worries. I didn’t know who that lady was, staring intensely into the mirror, with all those rolls of film at her feet, but the picture, and the letter, meant a lot to me.” As the photograph was threatening to fall apart because of the uncontrollable New York heat, Van Etten asked a friend to scan it for her. He told her who it was of. “Then I started to check out Varda’s work; I went to an exhibition in Paris and saw Cleo from 5 to 7, a sad but at the same time uplifting film.”

A month after seeing that film, she made a video with Michael Palmieri for “A Song for You” and Palmieri, without knowing anything about Van Etten’s love for Varda, wanted to do something along the lines of...Cleo from 5 to 7. “It was like the universe was high-fiving me: it’s knowing that you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”

So you studied photography?
Sharon Van Etten: I took a couple of classes when I moved back home with my parents in New Jersey, after I lived in Tennessee, trying to figure out my life. I got really into it, but I didn’t want to go beyond black-and-white film and analogue. Everyone can do digital now.

Your new album is called Are We There. I don’t see any question mark.
Van Etten: This record is about transition, I wanted it to be open-ended. Right now I feel a bit lost. I question all the time why I do music, why I perform, why people relate to it. The older you get, the things that you want in life change. I want a family. I want to settle down. I would like to go back to school. I would like to become a therapist. I would like to have a more regular life and routine and have stability. But I’ve worked so hard to be where I am. It’s been, like, ten years of this. And now that I’m on the verge of having something I thought I wanted, I’m full of doubt. [Laughs]

Did the attention you got with Tramp, your previous album, not change that at all?
Van Etten: I’m gone nine months of the year, while there’s somebody that I love very much at home. How can I be a good girlfriend and be away that much? It feels like it’s impossible to find a balance, to have a normal life.

You made Tramp with Aaron Dessner, sound architect with the National; this time, you kept control of everything yourself.
Van Etten: This is my fourth record. The first one I did with one other person. The second I did with some friends; and then Tramp was like a shit ton of people, a crazy production. The recording was spread over a year. I was exhausted. In interviews most of the questions that were asked were about the National. I loved working with Aaron. He helped me learn how to communicate. He was my translator to the musicians that played on my record. But in the end it seemed as if the record wasn’t done by me. That made me feel insecure. I didn’t have a set band at the time, that’s why it was kind of piecemeal. Now I have a band that I trust, that knows me. That was very important to me, Are We There had to be a band record.

Have you more self-confidence now?
Van Etten: Everywhere but in my personal life, yes. My writing is better than it has been in the past. I still feel like I’m starting out in some ways, but yeah, I took my training wheels off.

“Every time the sun comes up, I’m in trouble,” you sing. The doubt is still there.
Van Etten: That started out as a joke. If I work too late, I would probably get in trouble. I’m just working because I feel that’s the only thing I can do right now. It’s pretty heavy: it’s supposed to be fun but there’s a darkness to it. When I write songs, I can’t be anything but direct.

Speaking about direct: in the same song you sing “I washed your dishes but I shit in your bathroom.”
Van Etten: [Laughs] It’s just a goofy little song. We were rehearsing it one night, but the lyrics weren’t finished. We had a little break, drank something, and smoked a cigarette. I loosened up and freestyled about what happened that night, thinking no one would ever hear it. Everyone said I had to keep the lyrics, to show that I’m not this dark person that’s always going through shit, that I can be a goofball too. [Laughs]

A goofball who is not afraid to be hard and outright: “Break my leg so I can’t walk to you / Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you / Burn my skin so I can’t feel you / Stab my eyes so I can’t see,” you sing in “Your Love Is Killing Me”.
Van Etten: You can be going through your own struggles while you are in love with somebody. In fact, you can love somebody so much, but it still hurts.

“I Know” is a tender piano ballad. You have softened your sound palette by using a lot of keyboards.
Van Etten: Over the last two years, for the first time, we had a practice space, which we shared with another band. Their material was set up there, including a piano. I had forgotten how good it felt. I ended up buying one this year for my tiny Manhattan apartment, a nice Melodigrand. For the album, we used a lot of different pianos. Stewart Lerman, who helped me with the recordings at his Hobo Sound studios in New Jersey, has been working in the music industry since the 1970s. He knows every studio in New York. He had an upright piano in his own studio, but for the ballads we wanted me singing and playing the piano at the same time, so I didn’t feel so disjointed and unnatural. That works better on a grand piano, where it is easier to isolate the sound. Thanks to Stewart, I fetched up in the Electric Lady studios, where I got to play on the piano Patti Smith used on Horses. And a Wurlitzer from the Muscle Shoals studios. That was already incredible, but then it turned out they had the grand piano John Lennon used on “Imagine” at Hobo Sound. It was just crazy!

It’s just a piano, Sharon.
Van Etten: Yeah, sure. [Laughs] Anyway, it gives that lovely dark tone on “You Know Me Well”. There are about eight tracks filled with piano on that song. It got epic, and that’s the way I love it.

SHARON VAN ETTEN • 25/5, 19.30, SOLD OUT!, Botanique, Koningsstraat 236 rue Royale, Sint-Joost-ten-Node/Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, 02-218.37.32, www.botanique.be