Tag Archives: Sharon Van Etten

Video: Sharon Van Etten performs “Leonard” on Conan

Sharon Van Etten performs “Leonard” from her latest album, Tramp.

Photos: Sharon Van Etten & Shearwater @ The Wex

Sharon Van Etten & Shearwater
Wexner Center for the Arts
February 14, 2012

Sharon Van Etten
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Shearwater
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Video: Sharon Van Etten & Ted Leo “I Wanna Destroy You (Soft Boys Cover)”

Filmed on New Year’s Eve at Maxwell’s in Hoboken.

MusicNOW 2011: The National, Owen Pallett, Shara Worden, Sharon van Etten, more

MusicNOW, curated by the National’s Bryce Dessner, returns May 13-15 (same weekend as Nelsonville) in Cincinnati. Tickets on sale March 15. Full release: Continue reading

Low, Ted Leo (and more) Playing The AV Club’s Free Show During SXSW

The AV Club just posted details of their annual free show during SXSW. Always one of the best line ups every year.

It’s March Into Softness 2011, our free SXSW day party, slated for Friday, March 18 at the Mohawk. Here’s the lineup, designed for maximum aural satisfaction and assembled with great care with our co-presenters, Canvas Media and Flowerbooking:

OUTSIDE
Baths (5 p.m.)
Sharon Van Etten (4 p.m.)
Wye Oak (3 p.m.)
Ted Leo (solo) (2 p.m.)
Gentlemen Jesse And His Men (1 p.m.)
Small Sins (12 p.m.)

INSIDE
Low (5:15 p.m.)
Chikita Violenta (4:15 p.m.)
Maritime (3:15 p.m.)
An Horse (2:15 p.m.)
Tristen (1:15 p.m.)
No Joy (12:15 p.m.)

Plentiful (and hopefully free) libations and other party favors will be on hand as well; keep watching for updates on those, as well as the RSVP address which will allow you to gobble them all up. March Into Softness 2011: It’s free, it’s fun, and, more than likely, it won’t involve anyone getting smashed in the face with a can of Pepsi Max.

(thx Tom)

Photos: Sharon Van Etten, Julianna Barwick in Columbus

Sharon Van Etten, Julianna Barwick
Wexner Center I Columbus, OH
Jan. 21, 2011


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Interview: Sharon Van Etten and Aaron Dessner of The National

Sharon Van Etten’s seven-song release of 2010, Epic, appeared on many best of the year lists, including NPR’s and Mr. Duffy’s, and she opened the Pitchfork Music Festival in July. Her personal, confessional songs have won her enthusiastic fans. She’ll perform with Julianna Barwick at the Wexner Center on Friday (Jan. 21). Catch her with her band as she shares songs from her latest release, and maybe a few new ones. Below she highlights the way the songs have changed over time and gives us a glimpse of the future.

Also, the bottom of the post has some thoughts from Aaron Dessner of The National, who is producing Van Etten’s next record (“At the moment I hear walls of organs and some weirder guitar textures/noise…”).

I chatted with Sharon as she was walking around on a “beautiful blue sky, freezing day” with Brad Cook of Megafaun, who was in New York for her Bowery Ballroom show January 8th. The sold-out show included a cover of REM’s Strange Occurrences. Sharon explained the cover: “I am really psyched for their new record to come out. I recently found an old album, Monster, and that song is my favorite on that record.”

Are you and Brad sharing new songs you have been working on?

Yeah, he’s been playing me new songs, and I have been playing him new songs, and it’s been a nice way of catching up.
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Sharon Van Etten On World Cafe

Sharon Van Etten‘s latest album is one of my favorites of the year. She just did a performance + interview on World Cafe and you can stream that over here.

Robert Duffy’s Favorite Albums of 2010

I had a foolish idea. In previous years, staff members of the site have posted their individual lists, writing about their favorite music of the year. This year I proposed the idea of keeping that tradition but also trying to pull together an official “Donewaiting.com’s Favorite Albums of 2010” list. Using some fancy math I figured we could come up with some sort of list. I mean, just about every publication does it so how hard could it be? Right…?

The biggest complaint I get about the site from people is that the music coverage is all over the place, in more ways than one. One week there’s nothing but Wilco or Times New Viking, the next week it’s all about hip hop. But while this is something some people find distracting, personally I love it. I love being surprised as to what the writers have posted on the site as much as you do. Sure, maybe we could spell check more or when we embed photos more than 1500 pixels wide for no good reason it calls for a heavy load time, but that’s just how we roll. As a famous man once told me, “My typos are a lifestyle choice.”

So after getting a few submissions from the staff, I realized that there was no good way to put all the lists together into one cohesive thing. Seriously, how do you compare Kriegshog to Kanye West? We’re still going to keep them separated because quite frankly each writer comes from such a unique perspective I can’t rank them in any way. So this is the beginning of the list parade. Hope you discover something new, or are maybe reminded about a record you meant to check out but forgot about.

So that brings us to my list, I guess. I typically keep a running list once it gets closer to the end of the year of what I really loved, and then I go to my iTunes and Last.fm libraries to see what I listened to the most…. to see, what the fuck did I even listen to this year in general? I’m getting old.

If I was being honest to myself and to you, the stuff I listened to the most this year was not music but comedy podcasts. WTF with Marc Maron twice a week, Comedy Death Ray, Ricky Gervais, etc etc. And as for live shows, I’ve seen Eugene Mirman perform more times than any other band this year… It helps that he does a somewhat weekly show in my neighborhood, but you see where I’m going with this. Maybe I should be writing for The Laugh Button.

But, music! I still love music. This blog is turning eight years old in a few weeks, I must still love music… Right?????????? Am I writing this list to talk myself into the fact that I still love music? I don’t know. No, I do love music. CANT WAIT TO SEE THE DECEMBERISTS ON MY BIRTHDAY NEXT MONTH… But seriously, I have slowed down a bit on musical discovery and have circled the wagons on albums that I really love… The idea of retaining lyrics, song titles and even melody is a novelty post-MP3 but I would love to start remembering the names of songs without having to use the Shazam iPhone App. The hard drive in my brain is getting full, and I need to make some decisions on how I approach music. If you try hard, you CAN listen to albums during your day to day that haven’t officially been released yet. (That sentence would have confused a lot more people even just three years ago).

2010 was a goddamned great year for music. Here’s my list.


#10 Grinderman, Grinderman 2
Watch: Worm Tamer

If I were 10% of the man that Nick Cave is, I would be a total badass. Right now I’m at about 0.0004 Cave, but I keep hoping that I can pull it off one day.


#9 Sharon Van Etten, Epic
MP3: Love More

This album lives up to its one word title. Simple, raw, and powerful, the record may only be 7 songs but you will hit replay till it bleeds. Continue reading