After rising in popularity with an affecting, quietly intense indie folk-rock that she gradually expanded and fortified across the 2010s,
Sharon Van Etten
made strides into new wave and post-punk textures on albums like
Remind Me Tomorrow
(2019) and
We've Been Going About This All Wrong
(2022). With
Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory
, the singer/songwriter fully embraces an icy, mechanical post-punk palette, one that still incorporates elements of guitar rock (and is part analog) but is distinguished by drum machines, eerie synths, and prevailing electronics. It's a sound that's well-suited to the album's anxious and alienated songs. Speaking of which, in another first for
Van Etten
, they were written and recorded collaboratively as a quartet that included
Teeny Lieberson
(
TEEN
), who plays multiple instruments including synths here, bassist
Devra Hoff
, and
Jorge Balbi
, who's credited with drums and machines. The
LP opens with "Live Forever," a track whose gloomy, turn-of-the-1980s sensibility is reinforced with detached vocals, echoing metallic beats, and lyrics that answer the repeated question "Who wants to live forever?" with "It doesn't matter." Later,
poses questions like "Do you believe in compassion for enemies?" and "Who is to blame when it falls to decay?," this time over a dancing bassline, more urgent drums, and lively guitar and synthesizer accompaniment, but with a similar deadpan -- or perhaps more precisely, numb -- delivery ("Somethin' Ain't Right"). Arriving in early 2025, the album also seems particularly timely when it struggles with sociopolitical siloing on the stoned-out "Trouble" ("All the bubbles that we live in") and on "I Can't Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)," which fashions an angular lite disco for lyrics that try to tune out violence as well as caring before ending on the couplet "Will the people let us down?/Will the people turn it round?" The ten-song set closes with the dramatic ballad "I Want You Here" ("For whatever it's worth," "Even when it gets worse"), on which
seems to emerge from a medicated stupor to make a plea on behalf of us all. ~ Marcy Donelson