Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Jagjaguwar
Heaven can wait for Sharon Van Etten, whose patience with existential questions left unanswered is wearing thin. Her preoccupation with death and what comes after surfaces dramatically in siren songs like “Afterlife” and “Live Forever” from the captivating Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory — the title alone indicating a more collaborative approach to music-making — that signal a stylistic sea change for the good ship Van Etten.
Past flirtations with electronic sounds could have predicted a shift away from the gloriously ragged, and sometimes wild but often refined and richly rendered, indie-folk and left-of-the-dial rock of Van Etten’s oeuvre, but engaging in such an all-consuming affair with dark, synth-pop mystery and majesty is a bold artistic break with what’s expected of her. It’s an emancipation that needed to happen it seems, the once caged bird singing with more lucid conviction and lovely undulation than ever before, expressing agony and ecstasy and everything in between.
“Who wants to live forever?” intones Van Etten in the tidal album opener, climbing vocally with the breathtaking “Live Forever,” as her flowing and sumptuous contralto answers, “It doesn’t matter.” Immortality be damned, she’s done worrying about dying, and that is freeing, although in the next yearning breath, exhaled from the lushness of a softly buoyant “Afterlife,” she wonders expectantly, “Will you see me in the afterlife?”
Not all the earnest and searching lyrics on Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory are quite as conversational. However, while testing the bonds of faith, hope, and love, they reach out for understanding and companionship. Written elegantly across a melodic, alluring “Trouble,” with its slow pulse and arresting beauty, and the expansive, formless echo “Fading Beauty,” which almost seeps into a gently surging “I Want You Here” and its electro-clash crescendo, they probe, confess, and bandage wounds. Traces of Van Etten’s folky impulses are still detectable, too, never getting completely lost in the slipstreams.
And neither does the restless artistry of Van Etten and company. Falling into a faster pace, “Idiot Box” swiftly glides along with urgency and catchy clatter, whereas the exhilarating “Indio” explodes with power-pop hooks and eases into an airy chorus and “I Can’t Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)” marches to the big beat of a spacey disco drummer and infectious, post-punk rhythms. It’s all a heady mix of inventive programming and bass flexibility, subtle guitar work, bits of piano and drumming that goes from unhurried and steady to chaotic and stormy. The Attachment Theory has brought out the best of Van Etten.
