Sharon Van Etten | St Lukes

PCL Presents
SHARON VAN ETTEN
Sunday, 24 March
St Lukes, Glasgow
-------------------------------------
14+ u16s must be accompanied by an adult
Doors 7pm
-------------------------------------
General Sale begins Friday 19th 10am Via Tickets Scotland & See Tickets
https://www.seetickets.com/event/sharon-van-etten/st-luke-s/1260428

Sharon
Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow comes four years after Are We There, and
reckons with the life that gets lived when you put off the small and
inevitable maintenance in favor of something more present. Throughout
Remind Me Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten veers towards the driving, dark
glimmer moods that have illuminated the edges of her music and pursues
them full force. With curling low vocals and brave intimacy, Remind Me
Tomorrow is an ambitious album that provokes our most sensitive
impulses: reckless affections, spirited nurturing, and tender courage.
"I wrote this record while going to school, pregnant, after taking the
OA audition,” says Van Etten. "I met Katherine Dieckmann while I was in
school and writing for her film. She’s a true New Yorker who has lived
in her rent controlled west village apartment for over 30 years. Her
husband lives across the hall. They raised two kids this way. When I
expressed concern about raising a child as an artist in New York City,
she said ‘you're going to be fine. Your kids are going to be fucking
fine. If you have the right partner, you’ll figure it out together.'”
Van Etten goes on, “I want to be a mom, a singer, an actress, go to
school, but yeah, I have a stain on my shirt, oatmeal in my hair and I
feel like a mess, but I'm here. Doing it. This record is about pursuing
your passions." The reality is Remind Me Tomorrow was written in stolen
time: in scraps of hours wedged between myriad endeavors — Van Etten
guest-starred in The OA, and brought her music onstage in David Lynch’s
revival of Twin Peaks. Off-screen, she wrote her first score for
Katherine Dieckmann’s movie Strange Weather and the closing title song
for Tig Notaro’s show Tig. She goes on, “The album title makes me
giggle. It occurred to me one night when I, on autopilot, clicked
'remind me tomorrow' on the update window that pops up all the time on
my computer. I hadn't updated in months! And it's the simplest of
tasks!”

The songs on Remind Me Tomorrow have been transported
from Van Etten’s original demos through John Congleton’s arrangement.
Congleton helped flip the signature Sharon Van Etten ratio, making the
album more energetic-upbeat than minimal-meditative. “I was feeling
overwhelmed. I couldn't let go of my recordings - I needed to step back
and work with a producer.” She continues, “I tracked two songs as a
trial run with John [Jupiter 4 and Memorial Day]. I gave him Suicide,
Portishead, and Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree as references and he got
excited. I knew we had to work together. It gave me the perspective I
needed. It’s going to be challenging for people in a good way." The
songs are as resonating as ever, the themes are still an honest and
subtle approach to love and longing, but Congleton has plucked out new
idiosyncrasies from Van Etten’s sound.

For Remind Me Tomorrow,
Van Etten put down the guitar. When she was writing the score for
Strange Weather her reference was Ry Cooder, so she was playing her
guitar constantly and getting either bored or getting writer's block. At
the time, she was sharing a studio space with someone who had a
synthesizer and an organ, and she wrote on piano at home, so she
naturally gravitated to keys when not working on the score - to clear
her mind. Remind Me Tomorrow shows this magnetism towards new
instruments: piano keys that churn, deep drones, distinctive sharp
drums. It was “reverb universe” she says of the writing. There are
intense synths, a propulsive organ, a distorted harmonium.

The
demo version of “Comeback Kid” was originally a piano ballad, but driven
by Van Etten’s assertion that she “didn’t want it to be pretty”, it
evolved into a menacing anthem. Cavernous drones pull the freight for
“Memorial Day,” which fleshes out an introvert in warrior mode. The
spangled “Seventeen” began as a Lucinda Williams-esque dirge but wound
up more of a nod to Bruce Springsteen, exploring gentrification and
generational patience. Van Etten shows the chain reaction, of moving to a
city bright-eyed and hearing the elders complain about the city
changing, and then being around long enough to know what they were
talking about. She wrote the song semi-inter-generationally with Kate
Davis, who sang on a demo version when the song was in its infancy.

Since her last album, Van Etten has had a young son, and family life is
joyful. Preparing and finishing these songs, she found herself
expressing deep doubts about the world around him, and a complicated
need to present a bright future for him. “There is a tear welling up in
the back of my eye as I’m singing these love songs,” she says, “I am
trying to be positive. There is strength to them. It’s— I wouldn’t say
it’s a mask, but it’s what the parents have to do to make their kid feel
safe.”

Alongside working on Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten has
been exploring her talents (musical, emotional, otherwise) down other
paths. She’s continuing to act, to write scores and soundtrack
contributions, and she’s returning to school for psychology. The breadth
of these passions, of new careers and projects and lifelong roles, have
inflected Remind Me Tomorrow with a wise sense of a warped-time
perspective. This is the tension that arches over the album, fusing a
pained attentive realism and radiant lightness about new love.