For well over a decade, Sharon Van Etten has been paving the way in the ‘6 Music Dad’ scene, initially receiving acclaim for her acoustic power ballads and strikingly harsh vocal style. As of 2019, however, with the release of her fifth studio album, Remind Me Tomorrow, her music has adopted a more spacey, electronic feel, something that is mastered in the artist’s 2025 release, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory. This album and the accompanying tour harness the malignant sense of aching passion that fans are used to in a celebration of post-punk dreaminess, resulting in by far the most aesthetically distinct of all her projects.
London-born Nabihah Iqbal, who has supported The Attachment Theory throughout their EU & UK tour, warms up the buzzing audience with a dazzling fusion of electronic beats and wistful melodies. She plays some highlights from her 2023 album, DREAMER, as well as a few oldies and some unreleased tracks. If any audience members were left unconvinced by her set, which is doubtful, then her cover of The Cure’s ‘A Forest’ certainly won them over – this was a perfect assessment on her part of the type of audience that Sharon Van Etten is likely to attract.
As the last few fans shuffle in and the venue reaches its capacity, the star of the evening makes her entrance, eyeliner smudged, wearing knee-high boots and a gothic amount of hairspray. Her set is opened by the same song as her album: ‘Live Forever’, a heavenly swelling of synth arpeggios and angelic vocals. Van Etten’s voice has a rawness that is both orchestral and heartbreakingly intimate as it swirls around the auditorium.
She goes on to play two of her most recent hits, ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Idiot Box’, both of which have become instant fan favourites, followed by a selection of songs from her past 3 albums, tailored to her band’s new sound and highlighting the gothic post-punk influences in her previous releases. Despite not playing any tracks from her first three albums and only alternate versions of songs from her exceptional fourth LP, Are We There, the soul of these projects permeates her new material with far greater intensity when the songs are heard live.
Before playing ‘Tarifa’, one of her greatest songs to date, Sharon Van Etten dedicates the sentimental ballad to legendary director David Lynch, who tragically passed away earlier this year. “He has left so much beauty and mystery behind, and I was lucky enough to perform this song on the Twin Peaks reboot”, she remarks, referencing Episode 7 of The Return series, in which she performed in the iconic Roadhouse Bar. The band go on to play a Twin Peaks version of the track, inspired by the glorious sounds of Angelo Badelamenti and Julee Cruise featured on the show’s soundtrack.
The singer then takes a moment to talk about the name of her new album and the context in which it materialised. She announces that this is her first album that has been solely created with a band, its initial framework originating through group jamming sessions – she jokes about how odd it feels to say she’s started “jamming” in her 40s.
Van Etten then opens up about the journey she’s been on to get to this point, stating that when she started writing and performing, she did so alone as a form of self-protection. She touches on a traumatic relationship she was in before her debut record, Because I Was In Love, was released. The melancholy strumming and lulling of this album shines through the glowing cracks of The Attachment Theory in ‘I Want You Here’ and ‘Fading Beauty’.
This relationship has been described before by the singer in interviews, where she has recalled how her guitars were hidden from her and even broken, and how music became a shameful, isolating thing. Almost tearily, Van Etten explains how, over the course of her music career, she has learnt to let people in, gradually involving others in her creative process, on the stage, in the studio, and eventually to the point she’s at now, constructing an album from the ground up that is entirely collaborative. In this sense, The Attachment Theory is a culmination of everything the artist has published up until this point; it is a testament to the journey she has been on to not necessarily vanquish her trauma, but to grow around it.
Fittingly, this heart-to-heart is followed by a lament to nostalgia and youth in the form of ‘Seventeen’, taken from Van Etten’s 2019 album Remind Me Tomorrow. This track is, for good reason, her most commercially successful, appearing on the soundtracks of many popular TV shows over the past few years, including Sex Education, Maid, and recently opening the second season of Yellowjackets. As the crowd wails along to the affecting lyrics, it is clear that Sharon Van Etten’s sentiment about trauma and personal growth is one that resonates all around the room.
As the band winds the audience down with an elegiac encore of ‘Fading Beauty’, a collective sense of awe forms on the faces that surround me. If, as the singer suggested, the premise of The Attachment Theory was to study the idea that music has the power to further the limits of human proximity, then it is safe to say that the band have substantiated their thesis. Sharon Van Etten’s legacy will find its place among the greats of the genre, if it hasn’t already, and when people look back on her career, it is undeniable that this era will certainly be one of remarkable intrigue.
