I've only been listening to Are We There for a few days but the word that keeps floating to mind is 'masterpiece' because holy shit this is good. From start to finish, it never lets up - there's a bareness and yet also a richness to it, in the songs themselves, their arrangements and instrumentation, Van Etten's vocals (you can drown in her voice) and the all-round emotionalism of the music, apparent in each of those individual elements and even more so in the record as a whole.
It begins with "Afraid of Nothing", which has made me feel like crying every time I've listened to it - I'm already sure that it'll stay with me in months and years to come. It feels like cheating to draw even tenuous comparisons to others, but if there's one artist to whom a comparison makes sense across Are We There, it's Cat Power and "Afraid of Nothing" is like one part Moon Pix, one part You Are Free, plus a haunting flicker of U2 circa The Unforgettable Fire, and it's as great as that makes it sound.
And then, remarkably, it gets maybe even better with the next two tracks, both of them veering, soaring songs graced with telling details: the Cure-esque guitars that open proceedings over an ominously strutting bass line in "Taking Chances" and then strum ferociously back in later; the pulsating drum fills that run through and underpin the cresting vocals of "Your Love Is Killing Me". And so on and in - at times with one foot still in the atmospherically alt-countryish terrain in which her previous records largely dwelt (like on the horn-punctuated "Tarifa), while at others going well beyond really any recognisable genre (for example, on the beguiling, bruisedly delicate soul-folk-I don't know what it is of "Our Love").
There's a great sense of dynamics throughout - not just loud-soft (although certainly that) nor even just also heavy-soft (though also that) but more subtly in the shades and nuances between those poles. It's there in the rawly swooning drama of both the relatively unornamented piano-led moments like "I Love You But I'm Lost" and "I Know" and in the full-band numbers like "You Know Me Well" and the dream-pop of "Break Me" (that latter bridging into its chorus on a wave of chimes and synths that recalls the Cocteau Twins and Beach House). And, last but not least, then there's the comparatively languid "Every Time the Sun Comes Up" that closes it out, a warmly slurred slide into some metaphorical endless sunrise, the refrain morphing and iterating differently each time round until eventually it rings the whole thing out...
Well anyway, all in all, Epic had promise and Tramp was pretty excellent, but this is something else again - completely immersive, at time (and cumulatively) overwhelming, and just generaly brilliant. And, almost incidentally, easily the best new album that I've listened to so far this year. Oh, it's good to be moved by music!
It begins with "Afraid of Nothing", which has made me feel like crying every time I've listened to it - I'm already sure that it'll stay with me in months and years to come. It feels like cheating to draw even tenuous comparisons to others, but if there's one artist to whom a comparison makes sense across Are We There, it's Cat Power and "Afraid of Nothing" is like one part Moon Pix, one part You Are Free, plus a haunting flicker of U2 circa The Unforgettable Fire, and it's as great as that makes it sound.
And then, remarkably, it gets maybe even better with the next two tracks, both of them veering, soaring songs graced with telling details: the Cure-esque guitars that open proceedings over an ominously strutting bass line in "Taking Chances" and then strum ferociously back in later; the pulsating drum fills that run through and underpin the cresting vocals of "Your Love Is Killing Me". And so on and in - at times with one foot still in the atmospherically alt-countryish terrain in which her previous records largely dwelt (like on the horn-punctuated "Tarifa), while at others going well beyond really any recognisable genre (for example, on the beguiling, bruisedly delicate soul-folk-I don't know what it is of "Our Love").
There's a great sense of dynamics throughout - not just loud-soft (although certainly that) nor even just also heavy-soft (though also that) but more subtly in the shades and nuances between those poles. It's there in the rawly swooning drama of both the relatively unornamented piano-led moments like "I Love You But I'm Lost" and "I Know" and in the full-band numbers like "You Know Me Well" and the dream-pop of "Break Me" (that latter bridging into its chorus on a wave of chimes and synths that recalls the Cocteau Twins and Beach House). And, last but not least, then there's the comparatively languid "Every Time the Sun Comes Up" that closes it out, a warmly slurred slide into some metaphorical endless sunrise, the refrain morphing and iterating differently each time round until eventually it rings the whole thing out...
Well anyway, all in all, Epic had promise and Tramp was pretty excellent, but this is something else again - completely immersive, at time (and cumulatively) overwhelming, and just generaly brilliant. And, almost incidentally, easily the best new album that I've listened to so far this year. Oh, it's good to be moved by music!
