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EVENT DETAILS |
Rain Machine, Sharon Van Etten
Music: Clubs:
When: 10/15/09 @ 9:00pm
Cost: $17 ($15 adv.; 18+)
Call: 256-7750
Web: www.intheannex.com
More Information:
Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio has a new project, Rain Machine, and its coming to Madison:
RAIN MACHINE
Thursday, October 15, 9pm
The Annex
Tickets: $15 adv $17 dos
Ages: 18+
with
Sharon Van Etten
www.myspace.com/sharonvanetten
Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten is in the midst of an extended stint of U.S. touring in celebration of the release of her full length debut because I was in love. The album was recorded at Language of Stone co-owner Greg Weeks' Hexham Head studios in Philadelphia with Weeks producing and was released on Language of Stone. I'm hoping you'll consider advancing her show with a feature, CD review or advance blurb.
Choosing to keep the accompaniment to a minimum, the songs are simple and understated, a wonderfully unique addition to the canon of folk love songs. To quote a December review, "Sharon will probably be grouped alongside Cat Power, Leona Naess & Rachael Yamagata in forthcoming reviews, but in all honesty she truly resonates an immediacy that far surpasses all of the aforementioned artists" (The Music Slut). We couldn't agree more.
Sharon Van Etten is Jersey-born, Tennessee-raised, and currently resides in Brooklyn. She grew up playing anything put in front of her: piano, violin, clairinet, and later, joined every choir she could. After being in every musical she auditioned for as a teenager, she decided to start writing her own songs, and began performing live upon moving back to the east coast. There, she started finding her own voice and began her grass-roots style music.
When Sharon began recording she preferred using her first takes on her very lo-fi setup, creating a beautifully private aesthetic that has been described as reading over someone's shoulder as they write in their journal. "It is important to me to keep everything personal," says Sharon, "I would like people to know I am singing to them and for them. that I know how they feel." Crafting hand-made EP's for her first shows (fashioned from hand cut stencils, recycled paper bags from her liquor store job, and paint) Sharon made it a point to always have a new design and a new set of songs. She also released one much sought after lathe-cut EP as an extremely limited edition of 100 through Abaton Book Company. Soon, she had more than enough to a full length release filled with beautiful, heartbreakingly understated folk. Sharon's music has been described as:
In this heartbreaking debut, Sharon Van Etten makes a strong case that sometimes the quietest storm is the most devastating of all. "Because I Was in Love" introduces the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter as a lonely heart who stays up into the wee hours obsessing over what went wrong, a bottle of red slowly going down. Van Etten accompanies herself mostly on acoustic guitar, with the occasional electric and organ adding to the late-night aesthetic, and she submerges her unvarnished voice in layers of ethereal harmony. Recorded by Espers' Greg Weeks in his Philadelphia studios, the album isn't exactly lo-fi, but it is so resolutely spare and confessional, it could have been made in Van Etten's bedroom. She establishes a pervading sense of melancholy with her opening salvo: "I wish I knew/ What to do with you/ But the truth is/ I ain't got a clue," she sighs in two breathy lines on "I Wish I Knew." Forlorn and wistful, the song puts Van Etten in the canon of Cat Power, Julie Doiron, and long-lost folkie Sibylle Baier, but it's clear Van Etten is drawing on her own heartache. It didn't kill her, but rather inspired this burnished gem. James Reed/Boston Globe 5/25
Some albums seem, for the lack of a better term, "timeless," not in terms of quality but in that certain discs sound as if they could've been recorded 40 years ago or the day before yesterday. Take Brooklyn songstress Sharon Van Etten's proper (i.e., not limited-edition/self-released, etc.) debut, Because I Was In Love. It's virtually the definition of simplicity-voice and minimal picked/strummed guitar chords, some overdubbed background vocals and what sounds like organ and maybe a bit of electric guitar. (There are no credits.) Van Etten sings in a fragile, gently plaintive, melancholy alto, which is not only somewhat haunting, but itself haunted, as if her songs came from some subconscious deep-dark realm, as if she had to sing them. She makes fellow traveler (on the New American Whatsis-Folk trail) Jana Hunter sound like the Ramones in comparison.which is not a put-down, btw. Because sounds kindred to the 1960's folk catalog of the mythic ESP-Disk' label: Mij, Ed Askew, and Randy Burns, not to mention Tracy Thorn's pre-Everything But The Girl group, the Marine Girls. Sad feeling made plain, almost uncomfortably so, yet strangely comforting all the same. Someone said of the movie Plan 9 From Outer Space: "No matter what time you watch it, it always feels like it's 3 o'clock in the morning." Whenever I listen to Because I Was In Love, it feels like autumn when all clocks have been just turned back an hour, it's foggy (like in San Francisco), and a clammy wind is blowing the leaves around.-Mark Keresman/Signal To Noise Summer 2009
. This is a lo-fi album, yes - Van Etten's musical accompaniment is bare-bones and she surrounds her voice with just a few ghostly harmonies. And she may be most comfortable in that world. But that voice, which is soft but seems to float easily in and out of soprano without being confined to any range, is so appealing, and the songwriting on because i was in love so effective with its memorable, often-melancholy chord changes and hooks, that she might very well benefit from a more complex production. The final song, "Holding Out," for instance, ends with a flourish worthy of Roy Orbison. And one can see Jewel commissioning a commercial arrangement for the bitingly lovely "Consolation Prize."
So that may be in the future for Van Etten. For now, though, these introspective songs, their vulnerable and slightly obtuse lyrics communicating a fragility about matters of importance to a young woman's heart, offer a welcome introduction to a new singer-songwriter whose talent should win her a devoted, growing following. And for those who believe in lo-fi as the only way to go, this could compare favorably with last year's Bon Iver breakthrough. STEVEN ROSEN/Blurt-online.com 6/10
In the beginning of 2008, Sharon provided UK tour support for Meg Baird (of Espers) in what would prove to be the most pivotal and inspirational time of her young career. During the tour, Sharon was introduced to Greg Weeks, owner of the Philadelphia based Hexham Head recording studio, and after hearing some of her songs, Weeks jumped at the opportunity to work with her. The success of their collaboration in the studio convinced Sharon to release the album on his label, Language of Stone.
Sharon has played with the likes of : Kyp Malone (tv on the radio), Alden Penner (the unicorns), The Delta Spirit, Port O'Brien, The Finches, Bird by Snow, Wildbirds & Peacedrums (leaf label), Peasant, Miles Robinson (as well as contributed vocals for his record), Picastro (polyvinyl), Peter &the Wolf, W-S Burn, Matt Bauer, The Shaky Hands, Matt Gangi, Haley Bonar, Cat Martino, Marla Hansen, Beat the Devil, the Subjects, Scott Mou (collaborates w/ Panda Bear), Matteah Baim, Jana Hunter, Wye Oak, PWRFL PWR, Phosphorescent, Bowerbirds.
http://www.sharonvanetten.com
http://www.myspace.com/sharonvanetten
http://www.languageofstone.com
htp://www.heronrecordings.com
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