LOS ANGELES — As she was placing collectively her seventh and most up-to-date report, Sharon Van Etten got here up with a tongue-in-cheek concept for its title. “Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Concept,” she wished to name it — a reference to each her curiosity in psychology and a play on the familial dynamics that usually exist inside a band.
Though most of Van Etten’s bandmates have been along with her for a number of years, this was her first time writing songs with them, so enjoying with that relationship felt apt. However when the indie musician approached her collaborators with the thought for the title and band identify, there was one stipulation: “They mentioned, ‘I don’t thoughts you calling it ‘The Attachment Concept,’ so long as we don’t have to speak about our attachment kinds,’” Van Etten laughed.
As they gear up for a fall tour, introduced Monday, Van Etten spoke with The Related Press about her stream-of-consciousness fashion of writing and the way being a mother has made her extra cognizant of how a lot time she spends on her telephone. The interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
VAN ETTEN: Writing as a band was a whole accident. We had been rehearsing in 2022 for the “We’ve Been Going About This All Incorrect” tour and determining easy methods to take this album, which we recorded piecemeal throughout the pandemic as a result of we couldn’t all be in the identical room collectively. I believed the easiest way to reconnect after recording the album from afar was to hire a home and a studio within the desert and have it’s extra like a literal band camp, as a substitute of doing a type of sterile rehearsal environments, simply to have a approach for us to reconnect as folks in addition to musicians.
As we received to the tip of the week, we realized we had gone by way of the entire set that we had been planning for that tour, and I requested the band if they’d wish to jam. I used to be so bored with listening to myself. I used to be very impressed by the sonic palette that we had created collectively, and I wished to see what would occur. And in an hour or two, we wrote two songs with out actually attempting. And we laughed it off, we packed our luggage and we left the subsequent day. However my engineer recorded these jam periods, and I keep in mind enjoying them for my companion at residence, saying, “I feel creatively that is the subsequent factor I wish to do.” And so, after we did that first tour for the earlier report, I booked a writing session immediately and we returned to that very same studio and labored for per week with the intention of writing. And it was a really prolific week.
VAN ETTEN: The entire writing within the desert was from the bottom up. I didn’t have something going into it, which I’ve by no means finished earlier than both. My course of from being solo is one thing that I introduced into the session with the band, the place I discover the melodies first and I sing stream of consciousness.
VAN ETTEN: It very a lot is. There’s one thing about it that, if I’m going by way of one thing emotionally that I don’t have the phrases to specific but and I can sit at an instrument and simply sing, I get one thing out of me and launch one thing in a approach that I nonetheless don’t actually know easy methods to describe to folks. Even when it’s one thing I find yourself writing about later, it’s extra of like, I get the emotion out, however then I flip the music into one thing else that hopefully is extra therapeutic than the second that I’m attempting to recover from.
VAN ETTEN: The identify The Attachment Concept at first was a bit tongue-in-cheek as a result of I’m desirous about psychology and I’m from an enormous household. I feel being in a household and being in a band are very comparable since you turn into a household, you turn into one another’s chosen household, and also you undergo so much collectively. So from rehearsing to touring to creating a report collectively, you create these dynamics with one another, and also you additionally turn into one another’s help techniques. And I do know attachment idea is generally about your connection together with your mother and father but it surely’s additionally slightly bit about the way you join as a unit.
VAN ETTEN: Sure, and they’ll stay unnamed.
VAN ETTEN: Oh my gosh, nicely that’s a can of worms proper there. I imply, we’re all hooked on our telephones. All of us have screens. I’m additionally a mother, and I inform my child to not do the issues that I do. And I feel now greater than ever, I’ve to be far more aware about after I select to work together. However I don’t actually have a solution. It’s extra of an acknowledgment that we have to test in with one another once we really feel like we’re getting misplaced in that scrolling zone and I simply really feel prefer it’s a relentless battle.
This text was generated from an automatic information company feed with out modifications to textual content.
