SHARON VAN ETTEN AND THE ATTACHMENT THEORY

From heartbreak to heroine, journey has been characterised by candour and insight. With her new band to make their debut, this devastatingly intimate songwriter reveals how she found fresh inspiration in collaboration. “How can I keep doing what I’ve been doing, but try new things?” she wonders to Laura Barton SHARON VAN ETTEN’s musical THE ATTACHMENT THEORY set

Here’s hoping it’s not seven years’ bad luck: Sharon Van Etten (second right) and her current band

Photo by SUSU LAROCHE

ARK Chapel is a former congregational church on the soft slope of Crouch Hill in north London. Today, one half of the grey stone building is home to Mount Zion Cathedral, part of the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim. The other half houses

Church Studios, a recording complex that over several decades has hosted many of the music world’s great dignitaries: Dylan, Adele, U2, Depeche Mode, Annie Lennox, Nick Cave.

On a sweltering day in midsummer, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory are in the cool of the Church’s main studio, finishing a vocal take. From a small anteroom outside, Van Etten’s voice is just about audible through the glass: a swan-necked, reedy sound, given to sudden flashes of strength and luminosity.

A few minutes later, the singer and her bandmates are clustered around the computer with producer Marta Salogni. They listen back to the morning’s work, each quick with their opinions: where a vocal starts and ends, how a bassline rises. Salogni makes the relevant adjustments. They listen back again.

At this point in the recording process, the songs have acquired a strange tangibility. A couple of days earlier, they had tried out the new material at a secret show at London’s 100 Club, running through nine previously unheard songs and two crowd-pleasers: “Every Time The Sun Comes Up” and “Seventeen”. They wore twinkling goth attire. Van Etten, in tight black trousers and a long-sleeved mesh top, piled her long dark hair atop her head and, for a moment as she faced the crowd, looked elegantly nervous.

The 100 Club show felt a suitable crescendo for their time in London. For the past three weeks, Van Etten and her band have been here at the Church, working diligently. Today, the singer ducks out before the rest of her band – it is the graduation screening of her son’s summer film camp and she is eager to make it across the city. But there is something else in her early departure. This self-titled record is credited to Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory – the songs all written together with the band. Accordingly, the singer is keen to indicate that she is no longer the music’s only focus.

For more than 15 years, Van Etten has occupied a singular place in alternative music, releasing six albums, from 2009’s Because I Was in Love to 2022’s We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, via 2012’s Aaron Dessner-produced Tramp. Her music is droned and resonant and sinewy, imbued with an emotional heft that has long inspired a level of possessiveness among her fans, many of whom queue for hours after live shows to speak to her at the merch table.

This deep sense of connection undoubtedly stemmed from the confessional nature of Van Etten’s material – she has, for instance, spoken openly about the way her early attempts at a music career were crushed by an abusive partner, about the difficulties of leaving that relationship and beginning again. She has a particular skill for conveying emotional complexity, the nuances of love, the darker feelings.