Remind Me Tomorrow

This isn’t so much an evolution, but a complete restructuring of Van Etten’s sound. It’s her OK Computer if you want to get frank.

Her music is generous in its illumination of depth. There’s a sense of solace on the record. Everything before was a hard reckoning, and she knows trouble is never far off, but she’s breezy here. Comfortable, even.

Musically, she’s moved on from the folky Americana that made her name, and moved towards a more doomy, synth-based sound. Yet it suits her down to the ground.

While it sounds different from anything Van Etten has ever done, it also never sounds like anyone but her: Her big, sweeping choruses and singer-songwritery melodies adapt surprisingly well to their new context, with heavy, synthetic basslines and sparkling electronic embellishments accenting her echo-laden, multi-tracked vocals.

Throughout Remind Me Tomorrow, she plumbs the depths of contentedness, setting her satisfaction to a sound that's nominally dark yet strangely comforting and nourishing. Even if this album doesn't speak to your specific life, it will nevertheless enrich it.

Remind Me Tomorrow is not only a reminder of the power of love but also features some of Van Etten's finest work to date.

Much like Hunter, Remind Me Tomorrow is brutal, but it’s honest and open and true about how grim life is sometimes. By not pulling her punches, Van Etten has seemingly done the impossible--reinvented herself by doubling down on her own artistic tendencies.

The tension between Van Etten’s melodies and Congleton’s sometimes chaotic sonic coloring makes for a bracing listen on the album’s best tracks.

Sharon Van Etten was already one of the great lyricists of the ‘10s, but with this breathtaking new project, she’s proved an artistic pliancy her contemporaries may not possess. She hit her stride with Are We There, but here she’s not even on the ground.

Remind Me Tomorrow stands comfortably alongside Van Etten's finest work but also, excitingly, quite aside from it. Van Etten continues to amaze, move and impress with every move.

Remind Me Tomorrow is not unyielding. It is the peak of Van Etten’s songwriting, her most atmospheric and emotionally piercing album to date.

Her instincts as a songwriter--one of the best of the decade, surely--have not been diminished or neglected in her pursuit of an expanded, sometimes experimental sound. These ten new songs, some of her best yet, brim with heart and wisdom.

Its 10 songs are much more focused on how their protagonists are dealing right now, in the present, with triumphs, traumas, and new beginnings. This approach leads to rich songs with lyrics probing the liminal space where resolution isn’t clear—but emotional reactions crackle on the surface like tingling electricity.

This is the kind of record that never loses sight of a desire to learn and change. Whenever Remind Me Tomorrow circles in on starry-eyed nostalgia -- that vile, misleading thing -- it rearranges the fabric of its composition and converts idealism to retrospect.

It's certainly the best album of her career so far, but Remind Me Tomorrow is also quite obviously more of a jumping-off point than a culmination of any kind. Even as she ponders how she got here, Van Etten's sights are clearly attuned towards where she'll be heading next.

Remind Me Tomorrow, then, isn’t only a return to her calling, but a grand surprise. Sharon Van Etten has finally, truly, embraced just how appealing her unique voice can be.

A mix of highs and lows, pains and struggles, joys and triumphs.

Piano, the Jupiter 4 synthesiser and some elegant, spacious production courtesy of John Congleton replace Van Etten’s previous surging indie rock guitars. And yet Van Etten remains resolutely herself: possessed of a slow-burning seethe that builds to swirling crescendos, she is a consummate surgeon of relationships, keen on Bruce Springsteen

Remind Me Tomorrow turns on thoughts of growing older and reflecting on the past, resulting in some of Van Etten’s most mature lyrics to date. Most bittersweet is “Seventeen,” which applies radiant clarity to the hazy, faded production aesthetic of a band like the War on Drugs. Even when swamped in overproduction, Van Etten’s performances are uniformly the best of her career, and Congleton for once gives her the perfect amount of space.

Her fantastic new album, Remind Me Tomorrow, ups her ambitions even further, pushing toward a grand, smoldering vision of pop that can bring to mind Lana Del Rey and St. Vincent (producer John Congleton has worked with both), and the New Wave warrior-queen spirit of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O.

Remind Me Tomorrow, then, serves not so much as a nudge, but a forceful and playful shove to remind listeners just how special Van Etten’s talent is on both a lyrical and musical level. Don’t call it a comeback, but it may well be her most intoxicating and impressive work to date.

“Seventeen” winks at the inevitable, then celebrates it. Remind Me Tomorrow is best in thrall to this untouchable energy, when Van Etten and her band sound ecstatic despite their worldly wisdom.

The sea change in Sharon’s personal life has given rise to a tidal wave of ambition in her music; that she has harnessed it so masterfully surely confirms her position as one of her generation’s most compelling voices.

Remind Me Tomorrow actually does take a less-is-more tack in terms of its lyrics. Yet this album manages to be striking even when the words are minimized or backgrounded. Van Etten may be transforming, but she’s still triumphing.

Many of Sharon Van Etten’s fans may be disappointed by the lack of sadness and darkness on Remind Me Tomorrow, and while there are still elements of both in the album’s undertones, there’s more of a hopefulness and sense of promise that suits her just as well.

While the opening moog throbs of ‘No-One’s Easy To Love’ and ‘Comeback Kid’ are initially distracting coming from an artist once known for her sparse compositions, they quickly blend in to become just another part of the atmospheric scenery that add colour to her widescreen laments.

Remind Me Tomorrow feels full to the brim, flooded to the top with experimental colour and texture, drones and drums and synthesizers. [Feb 2019, p.85]

It never sounds over-considered or a grab for mainstream success, but rather the joy of an artist relishing new territory. [Feb 2019, p.106]

This ambitious, arresting album feels like the work of an artist wielding her considerable talents with newfound confidence and conviction.

Van Etten evokes Eighties electro pop. You can almost see the dry ice and excessive mascara. The atmosphere is doomy and gothic, creating an underlying tension that casts her lyrics of devotion and self-forgiveness in a shadowy light. It’s as if she can’t quite commit to her own happiness.

There are really only a couple of tracks mid-album that strike me as too conventionally pop, and they’re the singles, so you have to assume that Van Etten likes them just fine. Plenty else is shadowy, moody and lit by sudden crystalline flights of melody, and a few of the tracks combine eerie beauty with the pulse of four-on-the-floor.

Remind Me Tomorrow isn’t as consistently captivating as Tramp or Are We There, but it’s nonetheless a delightful return, one that gives us a new (pleasingly less traumatic) window into Van Etten’s world.