SHARON VAN ETTEN made her name turning bad times and worse guys into great songs. Luckily for us, she can still locate the “intensity” and the “demons” in parenthood and a caring relationship. Just no-one tell her mother. “I’m not completely dark,” she assures VICTORI A SEGA L. “I’m just darkish.”

WITH A SUDDEN SKITTER OF CLAWS, SHARON VAN ETTEN’S ADORABLY tousled dog barrels past her, barking wildly at an unseen menace through the window. “Squirrels,” laughs Van Etten, gently hauling the terrier remix away. “I was one of five kids and my parents never let us have dogs or anything because they said they already had too many ‘pets’. My partner grew up with dogs, though, and our son’s an only child. We’re late bloomers, there’s no way we can have another kid, so… how many people got the Covid pet?”

Van Etten and partner Zeke Hutchins – formerly her drummer – found their mutt through a Los Angeles shelter (“totally like Tinder for dogs”) and the animal is now a vital family member. “I was bitten by a German shepherd when I was a kid,” she explains, “so during training I was like, learning how to get over that by putting my hand in the dog’s mouth and stuff. It’s been a personal growth thing for me.”

Domestic stability, dogs and all, is new creative territor y for Van Etten. “I write because I’m tr ying to exorcise the demons all the time,” she says, smiling as the sunshine pours through the windows behind her. It’s a process that runs unmistakably close to the surface of her six albums, from 2009 debut Because I Was In Love – songs forged from the debris of a traumatic, abusive relationship – to her new record, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. Yet Van Etten generally eschews the heavy emotional baggage of “confession” or “catharsis”; her gift for communicating nuanced states of mind gives her writing a rare immediacy.