Sharon Van Etten: “How Beautiful, How Fragile!”

Cover Photo Credit: Susu Laroche

Iconic singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten has formed a band called The Attachment Theory. With their self-titled debut album out today, we contacted Van Etten with questions, which she answered sincerely.

How are you Sharon? How would you rate the first month of 2025 out of 10?

I’m doing alright. I’d have intention as a sliding scale though. The numbers go down as I look too far out into the world, but if I think about my life and family and my band and my community. There’s a lot of love there.

As a band, how did you settle on the name The Attachment Theory?

As a band, traveling together, experiencing the ups and downs of road life, we become a family unit. We develop sibling-like relationships. There’s a chemistry and connection that deepens. And the bonds we forge as we leave our real families behind while touring help keep us steady. It’s a real beautiful and intense dynamic.

Working as a band brings forth a new songwriting dynamic. Name one thing that made it easier for you to adjust to this dynamic, and one that challenged you.

The band made it easy to let go and write with them from the ground up. I didn’t feel judged at all and neither did they. I felt complete and utter trust. I felt vulnerable but in a very necessary way. To be able to access some of these communal emotions, to field everyone’s experiences. That was a challenge, but a welcomed one.

If you were to select two tracks from this album, one the easiest and one hardest to shape into a final form, which two songs would they be?

“Southern Life“ and “I Can’t Imagine“ were the first songs to come to fruition from our first jam together, without it having to be anything.  It wasn’t forced or planned, it was something we squeezed onto the end of a rehearsal week and it felt pretty natural.  The hardest one was “Idiot Box“ because the original form was long and repetitive, and we had to carve out parts and transitions and alternate chord progressions to propel the song from its original form.  It was a bit more like a dissection.

Can you list three very random fun memories from the recording process?

Some of my favorite moments beyond the writing were just making meals together, sitting at the table and connecting as humans outside of your life and studio life.  Watching TV together. At the time Yellowjackets had just come out and it was the best show to watch as a group. We all went to bed adrenaline pumping.

Are you a frequent dreamer when you go to sleep? What was a very bizarre memory that you saw? Do you think your dreams ever influence your songs?

I don’t remember my dreams very often, but I did have some type of vision while working in the desert.  Everyone was in the studio and I was sneaking a cigarette outside and the night of the desert is so dark.  And the stars are so vivid.  It seems you can see them go on forever.  And I saw my father in law (who had been ill) and then I saw my husband (who’s the spitting image) and I saw my son (who’s the combination of them both) and I just started crying.  How beautiful, how fragile, how powerful… life.  That was the night I wrote “Fading Beauty“.

Although we have only seen a few examples of it yet, I also love your performance as an actor. Do you have a ‘dream director’ that you really want to work with some day?

I recently saw Night Bitch. I loved the perspective and the sensitive yet raw take on the mother role. This quiet rage. Captured so well. Amy Adams and Marielle Heller were incredible. I don’t know if acting is meant for me. But Marielle seems like she would be a very intense and intuitive director with an emphasis on the female narrative, so that is very attractive to me.

When you check your streaming platform’s history, what are the last three songs you streamed?

Well my streaming is funny, because my son also uses my account, but if I look right now it says : Low – Drums and Guns, NIN – Pretty Hate Machine, Da Baby – How TF is this a mixtape.

Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured has their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of your lyrics would you like to see written on Sharon Van Etten’s stone?

“Love More”.

You can check out Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory’s Bandcamp profile here.