Asked to define her career so far — a career that has already seen the release of 10th anniversary editions of two pivotal albums, 2012’s Tramp and 2014’s Are We There — Sharon Van Etten says, “For me, it’s not about growing, it’s about sustaining, and I think there’s an art to that. I don’t want to do this next thing bigger or get to this next big level. It’s more about different challenges along the way.”
With the Feb. 7 release of her seventh album, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, the singer-songwriter aces the challenge she set for herself while writing and recording the record: collaborating with other musicians in the process.
Although Van Etten, 43, has worked with an array of artists that includes Angel Olsen, Courtney Barnett, Josh Homme and Ezra Furman, “I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery with how I feel about my own music and analyzing why it took me so long to trust other people with that safe space,” she tells Billboard on a Zoom call from her Los Angeles home. “I think a big part of that was when I first began writing songs, a lot of it was hiding [my music] from a boyfriend who I was scared of who didn’t like my music… I had to hide the fact that I played music or would play open mic, so it became a safe space for me. As I learned to let other people in — even just performing with me, that was a big step. This is another step of opening up and being vulnerable. I had a lot of people help me in the writing process to grow as a creative person and not be the sole owner of the performances.”
The name of the band she put together for the album and upcoming tour — Devra Hoff on bass and vocals, Jorge Balbi on drums and machines, and Teeny Lieberson on synth, piano, guitar and vocals — is a tongue-in-cheek reference to psychological research on the emotional bonds formed between individuals, especially infants and their mothers. Van Etten elaborates on the name later in this interview, but it’s not an arbitrary choice. She is the mother of a seven-year-old son and has intermittently worked towards a psychology degree with the intention of becoming a therapist.
Van Etten’s collaboration with The Attachment Theory, which was co-produced by Marta Salogni (Björk, Depeche Mode, Porridge Radio) and recorded at The Church Studios in London, advances farther into the electronic territory she explored on her last two albums. Chilled, angular ‘80s-style synth and sharp, punchy drums offset the warmth of Van Etten’s crystalline and lissome vocals, and when they meet at a song’s crescendo — as they do on “Live Forever” and “Afterlife”— it’s a real headrush.
The lyrics on this album take a few spins to absorb, in part because Van Etten doesn’t sand down the sharp corners of her subjects. One of indie music’s most sensitive empaths, she takes on the complexity of relationships (a recurring theme in her music), parenthood’s inevitable connection to the specter of mortality, and embracing what is arguably a new facet of diversity and inclusion in post-election America: the desire to coexist with those in our lives whose social and political perspectives are antithetical to ours.
How did The Attachment Theory come together?
The band has grown over the years in different ways. Devra Hoff started playing with me for warmup shows in 2018 for Remind Me Tomorrow. After Devra, Jorge Balbi joined the band. I met Jorge through Charley Damski. He was part of the writing process of this record and now plays with Lana Del Rey. I met Teeny Lieberson years ago through New York circles. She was in Here We Go Magic, she was in Teen. She has an amazing project under her own moniker, Lou Tides. It’s been shapeshifting over the years as I’ve been evolving from folk to rock to more alternative post-punk influences. The synthesizer drum-meets-machines-type marriage has been part of my listening over the years, and it’s been really fulfilling to play these songs in this way.
How did you settle on the name?
Everybody asks me, is that a psychological reference? Obviously, it’s a joke at that. I had a bandmate have a knee-jerk reaction against it, because of their actual relationship with their parents. So, we had this agreement that we’re not going to talk about attachment styles. But everyone ended up agreeing with me that we’re all from very different places and we have all these different experiences, but how incredible is it that we can come together and make something so beautiful. Also, when we’re on the road, we become a family. We have sibling connectivity tissue. They’re my chosen family. That’s something that people don’t always understand. When you go on tour, it’s fun, but it’s also really hard. But I have this family [of band members], and I know they have my back, and I have theirs. That’s a big part of why our band works, and why I trust them so deeply.
You have increasingly used synthesizers in your music, but I was also wondering if recording at The Church, which Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart once owned and where they recorded Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) influenced the sound.
The songs were already written before we went to that studio, but they definitely led to us wanting to be, number one, in a room where we could be in a like space. Number two, I definitely wanted to record in London, and three, it’s one of Marta Salogni’s favorite studios. Number four, the history of the space concreted our decision to work there. In recording there, we definitely conjured the spirits. We all but had seances in there. You can feel the energy as soon as you approach the building.
Why did you want to record in London?
The demos really spoke to us as being all these U.K.-based influences, like Procure, Joy Division, Kate Bush. Yes, there are other influences in there — like Nine Inch Nails, and I can hear Pylon. That era to me is deeply rooted in the U.K., and I’ve never worked overseas. I’ve never had a destination record. It’s always been the New York area, L.A. area. And I wanted to push myself to try new things. I try to do something different every time I make a record.
Where was your head at when you were writing these lyrics?
The writing process started when I was still on the road with We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. That was our first tour back after COVID. Also, life things were happening. I was thinking about aging parents, being an older parent and feeling distance from my family, while also having conversations with my band. For the first time, I found myself writing lyrics that weren’t just about my personal life but about conversations that we were having as a group. I tend to write very much alone. I usually already have the structure and ideas for instrumentation, and then I share them with other people. In this process, since we were writing together, it wasn’t just about structure. It was about subject matter, and one of the articles I read while we were writing was this article about the process of reverse aging and the technology there.
There was this study done in the U.K on mice. By injecting them with this serum it replicated cells and helped regenerate cells. I think they proved that after the age of 50 you can reverse aging with this technology. But if you take it beforehand it could have the reverse effect. And so, the movie Death Becomes Her came right into my mind. I was having this conversation with Devra, and we started talking about, “If you could live forever, would you? And what kind of world would that be?” After that conversation, we wrote “Live Forever” in one sitting.
Based on personal experience, when you become a parent, mortality looms large in your head. My son is an adult now, and doing fine, but I worry about what happens when I’m gone — and even before that, how do I not become a burden to him when old age kicks in?
It’s a reality. I learned a new term recently, called the Sandwich Generation. Since people are having kids later in life, they’re in the position of being working parents while taking care of their own parents. You’re kind of caught in the middle. We’re asking these bigger questions in our lives, not just of ourselves but where our responsibilities lie.
Speaking of parenthood, in “Southern Life (What It Must Be Like), you sing, “My hands are shaking as a mother trying to raise her son right.” Can you talk a little bit about the meaning of that song?
Devra Hoff is the bandmate that I talk to about lyrics. She helped me write the song “Something Ain’t Right” I remember her saying, “Be careful with these lyrics because people are going to think you hate on the South.” I’m like, “I don’t hate on the South!” She’s like, “I know you but you’re going to have to speak to this idea because people are going to ask.
And here we are.
I have in-laws from the South. I lived in Tennessee. It was a major turning point in my life, and it changed me for good and bad. I’m a Jersey Girl moving to Tennessee, and I learned very quickly what the South was. As I tell my son all the time, it’s a different kind of diversity when you have to be around people that don’t have the same ideals as you. You don’t avoid it. You try to surround yourself with people of all different ideologies and hopefully have discourse. I think about my upbringing. I think about where I’ve lived over the course of my life, and the different people that I’ve met. It’s learning how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. That’s really what “Southern Life” is. It’s the other side.
I’m also struck by the lyrics to “Trouble.”: “I don’t want to lose your love against your will/ Blow you kisses and take a pill/ To kill.”
It’s semi-connected to “Southern Life.” Without defining it too much, the narrative is that same feeling of when you go back home, you’re visiting family and there are things you just can’t talk about — things that in my past define the experiences I’ve had in my life that I’m not able to talk about with people that know me better than anyone. It’s like this burning hole.
You’ve put your finger on something elusive that I think a lot of people feel. I was born in Ohio and moved to New York City when I was young. I know exactly that feeling when I go back to visit.
I feel like that with other friends, where there’s always this place where you can’t go with them. And it hurts. You don’t share it, out of respect for the other person sometimes. It’s some kind of love, but it comes with pain and discomfort.
I’ve noticed that you are connecting more often to your fans in a direct way through emails, posts and playlists. What’s your perspective on the way social media has changed promoting your music?
I listen to the people that I work with. I trust all my circles — label, management, publicists. We’ve been working together for 12 years or something, and I feel like we’re all trying to learn and change and adapt. A lot of it is about authenticity and speaking to people like a real person. Being a parent and working, I also feel like who has the time to constantly engage in this way. I want to do it authentically but then if you share too much it’s also security stuff. You don’t always want people to know where you are and exactly when you’re there. I have to learn how to walk this line of being authentic and protective.
I also don’t want to bombard people. After attempting to be a publicist back in the day, I don’t want to be that fly in your ear. I want to have something to say and not just to pop up in your stories or whatever. I also want to share things that I’m interested in and to shine a light on things I think are special. But it’s time consuming, and sometimes I want to say, “F–k it all. I’m going to make music, there will be an album, I will tour it, and I exist.”
I don’t know if it’s my age or just the feeling of losing time as I get older. How much time is spent in the sharing process is daunting. I know how the industry works enough to be like, I’m not Beyoncé; I can’t just put out a record and be like, “I’ll see you.” And not only do I need to make a living for family, but also my band and everyone I work with. There’s a team of 40-50 people depending on me to back it up.
You’re doing three shows in the States at the beginning of February, then heading to Europe?
Yes. I’m doing my first three warmup shows in Westerly, Rhode Island, Woodstock [N.Y.] and my first headline Jersey show at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. There will be so many Van Ettens there. I’m just warning you. I’m looking forward to connecting with fans again, and I get to play with my friend, [Jessica Larrabee] She Keeps Bees, who I came up with in the early New York Days. Then we’ll go to Europe because since the record was made in the U.K., I wanted to quickly go there and honor them. The U.K. and Europe run is only like two weeks. Then we come back and do a full U.S. tour.
Will there be jamming?
[Laughs.] There will definitely be jamming, and as we get more comfortable with these songs in a live setting, and I’ll have a shred or two.
Your collaboration with Ezra Furman on Sinéad O’Connor’s “Feel So Different” for the Transa album is quite beautiful. How did that come about?
It was wild because at the time, I had just been sent this manuscript for Allyson McCabe’s book, Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters. When I was reading it, Sinéad was still alive, and I gave a quote for the back of the book, which was from the perspective of how the industry basically abandoned her. Anyway, I’ve been a fan of her work and covered “Black Boys on Mopeds” when I was on tour for Remind Me Tomorrow.
Then the Red Hot Organization reached out to me to do a collaboration with somebody, for Transa. They were partnering artists with people in the LGBTQ community, and Ezra and I have been in the same circles for a long time. Though we have high-fived on the internet over the years, we’ve never met in person. I felt like her punk rock ethos and vulnerability, and being a parent, would be creatively a perfect match. She was open, and I sent her that song immediately because I felt like in the climate of the world today it was almost like a plea. While we were recording it back and forth long distance, we found out Sinéad had died. So, I felt like this was not just for the LGBTQ community and a plea to the world. It was also a prayer for Sinéad.
You’re at a point in your career where you’re celebrating the significant anniversaries of landmark albums for you. How do you feel about that, and that up-and-coming artists like Nülifer Yanya are now citing you as an inspiration?
I mean, some days I don’t feel that old, and I don’t feel like I’ve done enough yet to really reflect. I know that in general it’s going to get harder and harder for me to do music in the way that I wish I could, but I also feel like I’m not near the end of creating and hopefully I’m not even halfway through my career.
Someone had asked me recently about writing a memoir, and I’m like, “I’m not that old — I don’t have an arc yet.” For me I’m on the slow ramp. I’m like, “How much longer can I do this and how can I challenge myself?” If younger artists are inspired by whatever it is I do, then that’s amazing. I’m inspired by so many people that have been doing it way longer than me.
