‘I am fucked up, that’s why you love me!’ said Sharon Van Etten toward the end of her show at Avalon on Tuesday night, it is true that the whole night had been a constant dialogue between her and the audience, which was constantly and shamelessly making the most direct love declarations. I forgot about how many ‘I love you’ I have heard, but it surely was an intense and passionate love fest.
Sharon’s warm and delicate voice was unfortunately covered too much by the sound of the rhythm guitar during the first song ‘Warsaw’, a tumultuous and raging number, which made the public immediately react: ‘We could barely hear you!’ screamed someone after the song… but it was the only thing they reproached her, as everyone was in awe during the whole night.
It is true that Sharon is very hard to resist to; on stage, she is just charming, a delight to listen to, looking like a vulnerable, wounded animal when she lets her head fall down, intensively living through her songs. Between the songs, she is joking, responding to the crowd, and fearless in her answers. One half-annoying-half-drunk girl repeatedly asked her for ‘One Day’, screaming she had only come for this song, and when Sharon replied to her she found weird she only came for one song, the girl yelled to apologize… ‘Don’t apologize, Don't!’ answered Sharon, elaborating more about the fact she had simply stopped apologizing and she meant it. I just liked her even more at this moment.
During the whole night, this contrast between her relaxed and direct attitude and her passion when she was singing was striking, she was playful and a minute alter she was suddenly caught up in the soaring and painfully honest emotion transpiring from each of her songs, as she was juggling between tracks off her most recent release ‘Tramp’ and older songs like ‘Peace Sign’, ‘Save Yourself’ and ‘Don’t Do it’ off her 2010 ‘Epic’ album.
Nobody should be fooled by her apparent folk-indie-gentle-guitars sound, as her songs were fierce and tempestuous live, Sharon seemingly engaged in a battle against herself during the genuine rawness of ‘Peace Sign’, the furious storm of ‘Serpent’, or the intense build-up of ‘Don’t Do It’.
The back-up vocalist, Heather Woods Broderick, was bouncing off Sharon’s vocals, providing the delightful harmonies on the Aimee Mann-esque ‘Save Yourself’ or the delicate beauty of ‘Kevin’s’ that Sharon introduced as a song about quitting smoking.
‘I’m trying to be serious and focus, have a little respect!’ she jokingly said to the audience, which was more overbearing than ever, ‘And don’t think I can't hear what you say!’ The exchange between Sharon and her public was continuing and she was handling it with a natural grace, saying how much she was appreciating the conversation,…’One day I’ll be better talker’. Oh but she was a really good talker, apologizing about the next song, the melancholic ‘Give Out’ because being about New York (what? I thought she had said to never apologize!), but swearing she has just discovered she actually loved LA.
‘Leonard’ sounded a tiny bit faster than on the album, and Sharon was looking like someone grasping for air at each of this ‘I’m bad’, rolling her eyes backward, carrying a sort of despair and pain, lost in the lyrical abandon of the vocal harmonies.
At the end of her set, the luminous of ‘I’m Wrong’, which contains the line ‘tell me I'm worth all the miles/that you put on your car’, sounded like a defiant prayer, a feeling even more resonating in ‘Joke or a Lie’, or how to be in peace with your heartbreak.
She and her three-piece band came back for an encore, to play ‘All I Can’, a favorite of mine with its powerful ascending melody slowly exploding into a giant anthem, and ‘Love More’, both songs showcasing her ethereal vocals, mostly accompanied by the box-accordion.
‘Don't laugh about it, it’s very dark’ she said to one of these talkative girls in the audience before singing this last song. This is the thing with Sharon Van Etten, she is totally real and candid, talking at a personal level to the front row. But the miracle happens when she plays her heartbreaking songs, ‘I want my scars to help and heal’ she says in ‘All I Can’ and it seems this is what happens each time, while reaching a new emotional level.
Setlist
Warsaw
Peace Sign
Save Yourself
Kevin’s
Magic Chords
Don’t Do It
Give Out
In Line
Leonard
Serpents
I’m Wrong
Joke or a Lie
Encore
All I can
Love More