Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow

Sharon Van Etten has certainly been busy since 2014’s 'Are We There'. In those four years, she’s had a child, started studying for a degree in mental health counselling, taken up acting with roles in The OA and Twin Peaks: The Return, and even written some music for film and TV. That’s a lot of life lived and, as someone who so evocatively captures those little moments in between the big ones, Van Etten had a lot to work with.

With all that change also comes a need to break the mould. To refresh, reset and start again. For her fifth album, 'Remind Me Tomorrow', Van Etten put down the guitar and laid down the bones of the album on keys. It may have just been an attempt to break out of a writing rut, but it’s also transformed Van Etten’s sound to a place she’d only previously dipped her toes in.

Opening track 'I Told You Everything' gives us a taste of this shift, but it’s all the more apparent in 'No One’s Easy To Love'. The twinkling synths, skittering drum beats and thumping bassline feel more Beach House than they do Van Etten. It makes it feel as though we are viewing the revelations of the song’s character from an elevated position, floating somewhere among the darkness below rather than on the ground with them.