Fresh from playing a crucial role on one of the best songs on the latest Superchunk album, Sharon Van Etten is back with her own long-player. We've Been Going About This All Wrong, out today via Jagjaguwar, finds the singer offering a batch of cuts that skip across a half-dozen genres with ease. Van Etten's command as a performer has perhaps never been more apparent, and late-comer fans such as myself should probably go seek out more of her back-catalog. But first, let's dive into this one.
Lead single "I'll Try" purrs and soars, a perfectly realized gem of regret and hope, while "Mistakes" whirs with a bit of deliberation, the instrumentation here more forceful than on other selections on We've Been Going About This All Wrong. Van Etten shares her soul here on some of these numbers, like "Darkish" and "Darkness Fades", and those are certainly stark and good, but I find it more interesting when the instrumention offers more noise behind her, like on "Come Back", another highlight here. "Anything" finds a nice middle ground between introspection and sonic risk-taking, but I'm nitpicking a bit. Sharon Van Etten's voice is such that anything she'd choose to sing would be soul-lifting. And We've Been Going About This All Wrong is exemplary in showcasing her talents.
We've Been Going About This All Wrong is out today via Jagjaguwar. Her video for "Mistakes" premieres later today on YouTube. Link below.
[Photo: Michael Schmelling]