Foto-© Devin Oktar Yalkin

Neue Kombinationen ergeben neue Musik – so auch bei der US-amerikanischen Singer-Songwriterin Sharon Van Etten, die nun zum ersten mal in völliger Zusammenarbeit mit ihrer Band (Jorge Balbi (Schlagzeug, Maschinen), Devra Hoff (Bass, Gesang) und Teeny Lieberson (Synthesizer, Klavier, Gitarre, Gesang) als Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory ein Album geschrieben und aufgenommen hat – das nun auch endlich erscheint via Jagjaguwar!

Diese neue Herangehensweise begann während der Proben in der Wüste für eine bevorstehende Tournee, als Van Etten ihre Band in den kreativen Prozess einbezog: “Zum ersten Mal in meinem Leben habe ich die Band gefragt, ob wir einfach jammen können. Worte, die nie aus meinem Mund kamen – niemals! Aber ich liebte alle Sounds, die wir bekamen. Ich war neugierig – was würde passieren?“ Offenbar Magie. “In einer Stunde schrieben wir zwei Songs, aus denen schließlich I Can’t Imagine und Southern Life wurden.“ Die Themen auf dem Album sind zeitlos, klassisch Sharon, aber die Klänge sind neu, vollständig realisiert und scharf wie Glas.

Das Album wurde letztlich im ehemaligen Studio der Eurythmics, The Church, aufgenommen, das perfekt zu der mystischen Mischung aus Elektronik und analogen Texturen der Band passt. Die Produzentin Marta Salogni (Björk, Bon Iver, Animal Collective, Mica Levi) war sowohl als Bindeglied als auch als Produzentin unverzichtbar, da sie “die Synthesizer liebte und einen Sinn für Abenteuer hatte“ und es verstand, “die Dunkelheit und die einzigartigen Klänge zu umarmen, die wir während des Schreibprozesses entwickelt hatten“, so Van Etten.

“Manchmal ist es aufregend, manchmal ist es beängstigend, manchmal fühlt man sich festgefahren. Jeder Tag fühlt sich ein wenig anders an – einfach in Frieden zu sein mit dem, was man fühlt und wer man ist und wie man in diesem Moment zu den Menschen steht. Wenn ich einfach offenbleiben kann und gleichzeitig weiß, dass sich meine Gefühle jeden Tag ändern, ist das alles, was ich im Moment tun kann. Das und versuchen, die beste Person zu sein, die ich sein kann, während ich andere Menschen so sein lasse, wie sie sind, und es nicht persönlich nehme und einfach nur bin. Ich bin noch nicht so weit, aber ich versuche, jeden Tag so weit zu sein.“

Für den heutigen Album-Release hat Sharon Van Etten uns ein Track by Track mit allem Wissenswerten zu den Songs geschrieben!

1. Live Forever

Live Forever is…I wrote it after I had a conversation with my bass player, Devra, about the concept of anti-aging technology.

2. Afterlife

Afterlife stemmed from an image or a dream that I had, where I was looking into the future and I was walking home with a bag of groceries, and I was imagining a spirit following me of somebody that I knew.

3. Idiot Box

Idiot Box features my son. And it’s about our relationship with devices, and even when acknowledging that kind of attention span, trying to be able to be present and communicate and connect with people, even though we’re all still attached to our devices.

4. Trouble

Trouble is kind of about certain conversations you can’t have with people that you’re really close with. I think about relatives or friends and conversations you just avoid because they have their own truths about it that you don’t share.

5. Indio

Indio is a funny one because it was the first time I had an experiment where I said I was going to leave the room and I had to run some errands or I had a phone call or something. And I was like, when I come back in the room, I’ll sing to whatever y’all make. I came into ‘Indio’ as an instrumental and I wrote a melody very quickly, but I didn’t have words until way later and eventually I wrote the words just about how loved and supported I felt by the band and the art of letting go and collaborating, but I was able to let go to collaborate because of the people in the room.

6. I Can’t Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)

For I Can’t Imagine it was teeny’s arpeggiation on the synth. I have it captured in the demo form and hopefully we’ll release it someday, but when Debra comes out with that bass line and I can hear Teeny laughing about how incredible the line is, because you can be very honed in when you’re working on your own part. And I think when our ears opened up to hear what was happening beyond us we were all just floored by what Dev came up with in the midst of this cacophony. It was really fun and I had this melody because it was ‘I Can’t Imagine’ in ‘Southern Life’ we wrote back to back that first day after we did the rehearsals on those two songs and I was just in the middle of the room kind of conducting people as they were performing and um very much nonsense words and it was more about phrasing and melodies. And it was just really fun and kind of off the rails. But yeah, that laugh in that demo is everything to me.

7. Somethin’ Ain’t Right

Something Ain’t Right is kind of a raised eyebrow to the world around us. Like as soon as I step outside my door, I just feel like something’s wrong everywhere I go a little bit. And the more I step out further and further, it gets bigger and bigger. But that was the song I let go and Debra helped me write the chorus. I knew what I wanted to say – just a certain unsettled feeling – but I also wanted it to feel fun and cathartic, because what else can you do?

8. Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)

‘Southern Life’ started similarly to ‘I Can’t Imagine’. Dev pretty much came up with the bass line while Jorge was playing drums, and it was that groove. And I remember I just wandered into the middle of the circle of the band, and I just wanted to immerse myself in interacting with the band. And even though I didn’t really have a lot of words at that moment, I just, it was more about being in the middle and communicating with everybody and being able to make eye contact and find more of a visceral kind of writing process and experimenting more vocally without thinking about words. But the initial phrases that came out before I finished the lyrics were what it must be like in southern life and then as I hone the lyrics in later it parallels the song ‚Trouble‘ in that I feel like there’s a duality in like who we were, who we are, who we will be. And how do you reconcile that within yourself, for yourself, and for other people…it’s complicated.

9. Fading Beauty

I wrote the lyrics on this as a meditation on my father-in-law, who has been really sick over the last few years and he recently just passed. A meditation on just on what life is and what you come to find later in your life, but you can see it in your loved ones, and as we all age, it’s like I feel I can feel the aging of everybody as I get older. And when I see it in my elders, I start seeing it more in myself and reflect more on, again, that art of being present and appreciating the moment while also, I’m just trying to have compassion for everybody.

10. I Want You Here

I mean, that song to me, there’s like one image of an image is a feeling of me literally standing on the edge of a cliff screaming to the wind with nobody around, that for my family, I would go to the edges of the earth. I will stand on a melting iceberg with you until the end of our days. Like just thinking about climate change, thinking about the world we’re living in, while also just wanting my core circle to be my core and still be strong in knowing that. And also wanting to shield my little one from that, while also trying to help in some way.