LOVE & ARDOR: SHARON VAN ETTEN

LOVE & ARDOR: SHARON VAN ETTEN

NINE PERFECT MINUTES

Kitchen talk from a former indie It Girl

Jaan Uhelszki

For this issue, Nine Perfect Minutes Zoomed into Sharon Van Etten’s L.A. kitchen, where the former indie It Girl was waiting for her 8-year-old son to get home from school. Dressed in a boyish black T-shirt and skinny jeans, her hair wet from a shower, her face free of makeup, not even a slash of black eyeliner, it was Van Etten in her off-duty role as a mother and wife, rather proud of herself because she had just taken a face plate off her oven door to clean it. Since moving to California in 2019, she’s acquired a few other new skills— not least of which is acting, starring as Rachel on the Netflix mystery drama The OA and in two feature films, Never Rarely Sometimes Always and How It Ends. But these days Van Etten knows how to take apart a toilet, has mastered meal planning (“Shopping in L.A. is MUCH different from shopping in New York"), and loves to cook (“If I’m upset, I can’t cook”). Not any of the kinds of activities you would associate with the ethereal, seemingly emotionally bruised singer who often cries on stage, winsome in her vampish stagewear, off-the-shoulder black tulle, and early-1960s cocktail gowns with nipped-in waists, the kind you can imagine Audrey Hepburn wearing when she was Breakfasting at Tiffany’s. Or attending a society funeral.

Mostly people know Van Etten because of her six much-loved albums, where she has written songs that could break your heart— most of them the strained sound of love unraveling, each keening syllable a dark mirror held up to listeners for them to commiserate and experience Van Etten’s pain as their own. But the eloquent expression of pain is just one side of Van Etten. “She’s not sad like her songs,” says Peter Silberman, lead singer of the Antlers, who asked Van Etten to sing on his band’s magnum Hospice, a sad record in its own “She’s really much funnier than you’d expect. She’s a total goofball.”

Which proves one thing about Sharon Van Etten: What you see is rarely what you get. “Yeah, I wear a lot of masks,” she’ll allow.

Only ever working as a solo artist, Van Etten did an about-face for her seventh album and put together a band—which includes drummer Jorge Balbi, bassist Devra Hoff, and keyboardist Teeny Lieberson—all the members collaborating on the songs on the self-titled Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory (a nod to her study of psychology). “I know it’s a little weird joining your first band in your 40s,” admits Van Etten. What’s weirder is it’s a goth band! And it’s not a breakup record.

Van Etten talked to CREEM about her superstitions, the best cure for the blues, the one thing she’d change about herself—and why she thinks she’s not excellent. She might be the only one.

How are your old fans reacting to your “goth” album?

I know people say how much different this sounds, but I’ve been listening to the Cure, Duran Duran, Joy Division, and Portishead since I was a teenager. It was a natural progression in a lot of ways, and it’s who I am.

Fronting a band instead of being a solo artist with a touring band, you seem like so much more of a badass. Freer. Even your hair is a little fucked up and deranged. That’s your big tell. The way you wear your hair on stage during an album cycle says a lot about where you’re at creatively, emotionally, professionally. So right now you just walked out of the shower. What does wet hair signify for you?

I know! That I took a shower before my son got home from school and then I can just reset. A big part of being a mom and splitting my time is I find more and more the need to feel like I’m putting on my work clothes. I’m wearing stretchy jeans and a black T-shirt, but in our earlier call I was in my sweatpants taking apart my oven to try to problem-solve something. Then for our second call I was like, “Okay, now I have to go 'on stage’ and do this other thing.” When I talk to other parents about what I do [for a living], they’re like, “What? That’s you?” Like that’s me there, but this is me here. Let’s just say I have to wear a couple of masks sometimes.

Do you feel conflicted about that?

I second-guess myself all the time. I love what I do, but my son just turned 8 in March, and he’s starting to get to that age where I want to be home more. But I also know how important it is for him to see my husband and I work. I don’t think it’s any secret that my husband used to play drums with me, but he also manages me and encourages me to have a career because he doesn’t want me to regret [not doing] it. Being creative is a huge outlet for me. I don’t think I’ll be able to do this forever, but I want to do it for as long as I can find joy in it.

You’ve been studying to be a therapist, and you’ve said you’d like to have finished your degree and be practicing by 50. What happens when 50 comes and you’re not a therapist?

I’m totally at peace with that. Every time I have a break, I’ll take a class or two just to chip away at the requirements to even get into a program. My first year of college was in 1999, and here it is 2005. They want me to retake [some of those early classes], but I don’t have time to go to the lab. It’s these types of things that are just barriers to getting my degree. My dream job would be if I could still do music and be able to be a counselor or a therapist and work out of a college and be a counselor to college-age students.

I’m struck by the way you make decisions. The universe seems to have a lot to do with that.

Well, it’s funny that you noticed. I believe that the universe shows up and gives you signs. I mean, I have a lucky number, 44, that I associate with my late grandmother. And I feel like every time that number appears in my life it’s a sign that I’m moving in the right direction, I’m on the right path. That number has appeared in my life in very pivotal moments. People in my life who know me, they’ve seen it too, so it’s not just me imposing my superstition onto them. When we first moved from New York, the first bus that was assigned to our neighborhood was number 44. And my husband’s birthday is on 4/4, April 4, and his mom was born in 1944—funny things that just keep appearing and who knows what they mean? But I take it as a nod from my grandmother. She was just somebody that I was the most close with, and she was the first person I knew that passed away when I was at a young age. When I first left home the number 44 started appearing in my life. I just felt it was her.

It’s a master number in numerology.

When I looked it up, it said it was a guardian angel, and when I think about that, I probably shouldn’t even be here with some of the things that have happened in my life. I feel like there’s a bigger force that’s been looking out for me. I’m not super religious. I’m spiritual, and I do believe in energy, but I can’t really put a name to it. But I like to believe that it’s my grandma flow. But on top of that, in your life you get to a juncture where the universe is presenting you with something, even though it might not be something you expect or want. There was a juncture where I had told my band in 2014 that I was going to go back to school and I wanted to focus on my relationship. But as soon as I got into Brooklyn College, I got asked to do this acting job in L.A. I remember thinking that I feel like a phony if I take this acting job when I just told my band that I was going back to school for psychology. My partner and I talked a lot about how I could do both. “I think the universe is offering you this thing!” he said. He was right. I ended up being able to do both. What do they say about making plans?

John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” He was a big believer in numerology too. Except it was the number 9, not 44. You turned 44 this year, does that make you think you’re going to have a stellar year?

I don’t know, I guess it’s maybe my spiritual golden year. As for what this year means for me, the world feels like it’s at a giant crossroad. I feel like 44, to me, is finding meaning outside of my life, outside of my work, and recentering a bit more to be able to focus on being more present and just reassessing how I can be a better person. I feel like I’ve been so possessed by my music, but I just have this urge to be more present in my life in general, now more than ever.

What do you feel that you were groomed to be?

I was always into music. That’s always been something that I’ve had a connection with, but I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I didn’t write seriously when I was a teenager. I wasn’t excellent. It’s learned by ear. I could sing harmonies in choir and I could play chords on the guitar and I definitely gravitated toward it, but I had no idea [that it would become my life’s work]. My parents always encouraged me to have a backup plan; that’s why I went to school for recording production technology. But then the universe kept bringing me into the music world where I ended up getting a job at a coffee shop that turned into a venue, and that’s how I got a crash course in indie music. I came into music in the indie world in the 2000s, which was probably the height of the worst time to enter the music industry. Especially by the time I first came out in 2009. But I was in it because I loved it. I didn’t have any higher aspirations. The joke in my family is that I like to learn how to do things, but I don’t do anything extraordinarily well. I learn things, and I start things. If you look around my house, I have things half-made. For me it’s more of the act of learning how to do something, but I’m not concerned about doing it well.

“I ENDED UP GETTING A JOB AT A COFFEE SHOP THAT TURNED INTO A VENUE, AND THAT’S HOW I GOT A CRASH COURSE IN INDIE MUSIC.”

The whole debacle in Murfreesboro, Tenn., with the ex-boyfriend who didn’t want you to pursue your music—and you were forced to write songs in a closet. That relationship still seems to cast a long shadow and still appears in your songs.

I know. As I’ve gotten older and I have settled down, I’m trying to learn to have more compassion with hindsight and distance [for him], I hope he’s found peace in his life. He was an addict and it was unhealthy and I hope that he’s in a better place. We have not spoken since I left Tennessee. And then I fell for somebody else [who was similar], I had developed these patterns; I would fall in love with someone that I felt needed help or wasn’t as bad as the person before, so that’s a win, right? But I think everyone I’ve fallen in love with along the way has shaped who I am and how I think about love. I don’t want to dismiss what I’ve learned and also the good things I got from those relationships even though they were unhealthy. I’m trying to find more of the positive parts that I have taken with me over the years that have shaped me as a person, and when I talk to other young women who have been through similar situations, I don’t want them to think they’re scarred forever or that they’re untouchable now. You have to walk a fine line, especially as a female talking about relationships, and that’s not what all my songs are about. They’re about becoming; it’s about discovery, and it’s about letting love in and not dwelling on the past. Having hindsight and looking back on my earlier songs that are a bit more broken, but there’s still always light and trying to overcome the emotions to be able to move on. Hopefully people can hear it, even in those early ones.

But there have been a lot of sad ones. So what’s your best cure for the blues? Well, it depends on the time of day, I guess. But since 2020 I’ve reconnected with a friend of mine who’s a trainer based in North Carolina, and once a week she and I have video chats. I was, I think like most of us, we were all getting into a pretty dark place in isolation. My drinking and smoking had started growing again, so I was like, “I gotta get it together.” So I reached out to her, and I asked if we could have weekly meetups so I could just be held accountable. I felt like I was finding my voice again. My posture was better, I felt strong, and I was exercising, whether it be yoga, Pilates, jogging. I found different ways to have a healthy outlet. I love to cook, but there’s a Diane Cluck song where she talks about, if you’re cooking in a bad mood you can taste it. If I’m not feeling creative in a music way, then I’ll start looking at recipes and see if there’s something that’s inspiring. I can put my creative energy into something else. Sometimes driving to the beach and connecting to the ocean, and letting myself sit with the ocean for a little while, is very grounding for me.

What’s one thing you’d change about yourself?

I wish I could say what was on my mind at the moment. I tend to be very internal and nonconfrontational, and if I’m feeling something very intensely, I retreat. I need time by myself to dissect and live with it and then let the intensity of it go so that I can have a conversation with somebody.

Do you still cry on stage?

I do. People always ask me if I still get nervous before I go on. Absolutely. If I don’t get nervous before I go on stage then it’s over for me. Why do it? But it takes me about three songs to just shake the pure emotion.

How do friends describe you?

As an empath. I think I’m a good listener, but sometimes I tend to disappear. But I’m there whenever people need me. My mom always said, “You’re just always taking the wounded birds in.”