How does the action of a body help us hear a voice? We look at someone on a stage and, however meaningless or programmatic the impulse, we expect a certain sound and gesture. Take a child who sings melismatically, with a deep growl, thrusting a hip and looking fierce: it’s unsettling, a depth of feeling we think children cannot have, and an eros they ought not to even know about. With Sharon Van Etten it’s the opposite. What we assume we will get when we see her on stage is some version of the incredibly tender, aching voice and shuffling indie arrangements that dominate her recorded work, and really shine on her heartbreaking new album, Tramp (out February 7). Instead, on the stage at Mercury Lounge, where she debuted the material from Tramp last night, the young Van Etten’s voice and stage presence was deadpan at best and self-loathing at worst. The album’s dominant mood, remorse, requires the kind of complex mix of emotions—pride, regret, adoration, acceptance—that Van Etten was either too anxious, inexperienced, or unwilling to convey. More
Posted on January 19th, 2012 4:05pm
