"You're the reason why I'll move to the city and the reason why I'll leave" Sharon Van Etten sings with a powerful, lovely, very express voice during her off hour set. With just a drummer for accompaniment, the track is from last years Tramps, an album I considered surreally solipsistic and boring and I see no reason to seriously reconsider my opinion.
Except, her voice is so lovely and she is so sweetly unassuming, that what seems to be a sort of monstrous female ego chomping at her inner life and spitting it out with dreary melodies and deeply felt guitar strumming is much more bearable on stage. Sharon is the alt girl of choice whether you are the Nationals or TV On The Radio, she is good idea to keep your attention but nowhere near good enough to threaten any one. There is a dodgy tiredness to the woman on record, she seems to go on and on and on, with only a 7.5 from the bloated schmucks at Pitchfork to show for their efforts.
One thing should be said, Sharon is pretty enough to keep your attention, and another thing should be mentioned, this intense self interest plays out like a real life BFF when she pulls it out on stage. The songs have a lovely lazy flow with lots of eye kissing and deep souls twitching stuff and dedications to boyfriend (some bloke named Christian, apparently) and opening for Nick Cave ("Believe me, I know how lucky I am") it is a strange contrariness to Nick's love as death myth. The songs are love as self mythologist.
It gets draggy fast, and she didn't bother with my fave, "Ask", but it isn't the disastrous pokiness of her albums and she did herself no harm. And there is the voice, a beautiful instrument and a devastating calm in a sea of emotional visions. Even when kissing her boyfriends eyes.
Grade: B-