Sharon Van Etten: Tramps Like Us

Videos by American Songwriter

With an evocative voice and laidback personality, it’s easy to see why she’s been asked to collaborate with numerous acts. She happens to hold great company, but make no mistake about it: she shines alone in Tramp’s spotlight, backed by an ensemble that perfectly fills in her sonic space.

Most of these contributors only appear on a few tracks. The exception is The National’s Aaron Dessner, who played a heightened role as Van Etten’s chief collaborator and producer.

“He just had a really discerning way of talking,” she explains. “He didn’t have a grand idea in mind. He just liked the music before [the songs] were anything … He saw potential in them, without trying to turn them into something they weren’t. He was genuinely interested in collaborating together and talking about ideas. I never had that before.”

“There’s a rawness and sincerity in Sharon’s music – I think of PJ Harvey and Patti Smith – that strikes me every time she plays a new song and I think her use of harmony is a tremendous gift,” Dessner says. “I’m mostly accustomed to the slow grind of The National’s collaborative songwriting and recording process, so it was refreshing that Sharon was bringing in mostly finished songs that we could immediately dive into from a recording and production standpoint.”

While the partnership appeared to be a natural fit from the start, recording Tramp took significantly more patience. Between Van Etten and Dessner’s touring schedules, the recording process was trying but ultimately rewarding, as the two chipped away at the songs on and off from October 2010 to July 2011 in his Brooklyn garage studio.

“I had never worked in that way,” she recalls. “I’m used to working in one solid block of time. I was worried that it wasn’t going to feel cohesive because of that. It ended up working out in the opposite way.”

“We started slowly and had a few false starts and failed experiments,” Dessner adds, “but I feel we managed to push these songs aesthetically outside of her comfort zone without burying them or losing sight of their core essence.”

As she wrote throughout her travels, her songwriting began to blossom, matching her musical explorations with Dessner. Her compositions took on the character of her travels, influences and experiences. Album opener “Warsaw” was written in Poland while on tour with The National, while “Kevin’s” takes the name of someone she briefly subletted from. And she wrote “Leonard” for Leonard Cohen – one of her primarily influences over this last period of her life.

On Tramp, the most evident turn of the page comes in her silver-lined affirmation “We Are Fine.” It’s a song written about a friend who talks her down from a panic attack – something that she’s been afflicted by throughout her musical career. Despite the topic, Van Etten’s track represents one of her most optimistic tunes, a far cry from the defeated songs in her earlier catalog. She duets with Condon, a personal friend who’s also battled anxiety.

“We’ve talked about those sorts of things before,” Condon recalls. “The song felt like a lullaby for stressed out people like me.”

As Van Etten and Condon’s serene four minutes together plays, the line “I’m all right” transforms from a reassuring mantra into a realization that Van Etten is more than just all right. It’s within this song that one can best see her maturation into an artist not just capable of holding her own alongside her talented contributors, but one who can be her own main attraction.

 

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Leave a Reply

Video Premiere: Flagship, “Backseat”