Sharon Van Etten crosses into an unsettling new phase
Sharon Van Etten took a break after her 2014 album, “Are We There,” which tied together many of the themes that dominated the first phase of her career. In a series of mostly guitarbased albums, Van Etten offered unflinching portrayals of turbulent, ultimately toxic relationships that couldn’t help but leave any empathetic listener, let alone the narrator, deeply shaken.
“Remind me Tomorrow” (Jagjaguwar) follows a hiatus that included college, acting, marriage, motherhood. It also marks a transition into a spikier sound built on keyboards and synthesizers. The album opens with a vow of transparency, something that Van Etten has never shied from: “Sitting at the bar I told you everything.”
The songwriter speaks from a presumably more settled personal perspective, but the songs are anything but smooth. “I want to make sense of it all,” she sings on “Hands.” But what if you can’t? In many ways, “Remind Me Tomorrow” is about the impossibility of doing that, and the sonic treatments underline that sense of irresolution.
Producer John Congleton serves as noise-maker in chief, the foil who doesn’t so much serve the songs as subvert them with disruptive bursts of noise and ominous atmospherics. The tension between Van Etten’s melodies and Congleton’s sometimes chaotic sonic coloring makes for a bracing listen on the album’s best tracks.
The songs touch on notions of love and trust, and the self-doubt and uncertainty that constantly shadow those impulses. “Memorial Day” manages to sound both creepy and delicate, while “Jupiter,” a love ballad, evokes the menace of “Dream Baby Dream” by avant-garde electro-punks Suicide. Van Etten also takes stock of her past, and in “Seventeen” brings her past and current selves together in a dialogue that is poignant and disquieting. It builds to a moment of self-recognition that would be anthemic if it weren’t so unnerving.