LOS ANGELES (AP) — As she was placing collectively her seventh and most up-to-date file, Sharon Van Etten got here up with a tongue-in-cheek thought for its title. “Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory,” she needed to name it — a reference to each her curiosity in psychology and a play on the familial dynamics that always 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 taking part in with that relationship felt apt. However when the indie musician approached her collaborators with the thought for the title and band title, there was one stipulation: “They said, ‘I don’t mind you calling it ‘The Attachment Theory,’ as long as we don’t have to talk about our attachment styles,’” 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 model 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.
AP: What prompted the change in how this file was made?
VAN ETTEN: Writing as a band was a whole accident. We have been rehearsing in 2022 for the “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong” tour and determining find out how to take this album, which we recorded piecemeal in the course of the pandemic as a result of we couldn’t all be in the identical room collectively. I believed one of the best ways to reconnect after recording the album from afar was to hire a home and a studio within the desert and have or not it’s extra like a literal band camp, as a substitute of doing a kind of sterile rehearsal environments, simply to have a method for us to reconnect as folks in addition to musicians.
As we bought to the top of the week, we realized we had gone by the entire set that we have been planning for that tour, and I requested the band if they might need 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 needed 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 following day. However my engineer recorded these jam periods, and I bear in mind taking part in them for my companion at house, saying, “I think creatively this is the next thing I want to do.” And so, after we did that first tour for the earlier file, I booked a writing session straight away 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.
AP: Did you’ve gotten the lyrics written beforehand?
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.
AP: Singing stream of consciousness sounds very non secular, nearly like talking in tongues.
VAN ETTEN: It very a lot is. There’s one thing about it that, if I’m going by one thing emotionally that I don’t have the phrases to precise but and I can sit at an instrument and simply sing, I get one thing out of me and launch one thing in a method that I nonetheless don’t actually know find out how 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 tune into one thing else that hopefully is extra therapeutic than the second that I’m attempting to recover from.
AP: How did you give you the album title?
VAN ETTEN: The title The Attachment Concept at first was a bit tongue-in-cheek as a result of I’m taken with psychology and I’m from a giant household. I believe being in a household and being in a band are very related since you grow to be a household, you grow to be one another’s chosen household, and also you undergo rather a lot collectively. So from rehearsing to touring to creating a file collectively, you create these dynamics with one another, and also you additionally grow to be one another’s assist programs. And I do know attachment idea is usually about your connection together with your dad and mom however it’s additionally a bit bit about the way you join as a unit.
AP: I’m certain your attachment kinds got here up within the desert.
VAN ETTEN: Sure, and they’ll stay unnamed.
AP: I really like your tune, “Idiot Box.” I questioned, as an artist, how you consider our habit to leisure.
VAN ETTEN: Oh my gosh, properly 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 believe now greater than ever, I’ve to be far more conscious about once I select to work together. However I don’t actually have a solution. It’s extra of an acknowledgment that we have to verify 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 continuing battle.
