Sharon Van Etten - We've Been Going About This All Wrong
The singer-songwriter’s sixth album is an immersive collection of songs, wrestling with trauma both collective and personal in an increasingly destabilising world and will be the greatest record you’ll hear this year.
The singer-songwriter’s sixth album is an immersive collection of songs, wrestling with trauma both collective and personal in an increasingly destabilising world and will be the greatest record you’ll hear this year.
The above might be a bold claim, we are only five months into 2022 after all, but hear me out and hear this stunning piece of work. We've Been Going About This All Wrong is intensely personal, exploring themes like motherhood, love, fear, what we can and can't control, and what it means to be human in a world that is wracked by so much trauma.
The decision not to release any singles ahead of the album launch was a brave one, these days artists tend to share at least half the record via social media. A brave decision yes but an absolutely sure fire genius move. It needs to be heard as a volume of work, each song entwines with the next, like chapters of a classic novel.
We open with Darkness Falls which sounds like a potential trigger warning of things to come but the darkness does indeed fade into a wall of sound that you could simply fall in love with.
Home To Me tackles the struggle of being a working Mother “You’re on my mind/ Do you not see?/ I need my job/ Please don’t hold that against me/ You are my life.” It really is one of those stop what you are doing and LISTEN moments.
Van Etten’s voice is angelic, take the track Darkish for example, it sounds like a call from heaven, I can almost hear Kate Bush asking for her vocal chords back, yes that good! ‘Mistakes’ is more up beat but shows no lesser emotions for it, the song could well be the more informed version of the song Seventeen from Van Etten’s previous album Remind Me Tomorrow.
We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is, like all of Van Etten’s albums, an intensely personal affair that pulls you in from the first note and takes you on a true journey. It floats from Elliott Smith like harmonies to the operatic tones of Enya. It is a record that confronts vulnerability, weakness and insecurities and yet tells you all will be beautiful. Thank you, Sharon, for this masterpiece.
10/10
