We've Been Going About This All Wrong

This is very much the most mature Sharon Van Etten offering to date - and perhaps the most musically accomplished, too.

Van Etten gives us what is, quite possibly, her strongest album yet. And that sense of breakthrough, of sheer lift, is prevalent right from the start. ... There’s a powerful sincerity and confidence to her vocals throughout the record, as she weaves and bobs around her deceptively simple and emotive melodies, often hitting notes that sounds for a millisecond like they won’t quite work, and then suddenly, they do, as on the final heavenly note of “Darkness Fades”.

The combination of her voice, her ever-deepening talent as a songwriter and musical arrangements that are well thought out but not fussed over makes We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong a potent addition to Van Etten’s catalog. Whatever else the album title refers to, she’s been going about her music exactly right.

We've Been Going About This All Wrong reflects on the darkest moments of her earliest work with a newfound sense of confidence and control fully discovered in the Remind Me Tomorrow era.

With a voice as powerful as hers, it is a wise choice, as is listening to this album. At only 10 tracks and 39 minutes, it leaves you wanting more, so the logical choice is just to play it again and be mesmerized another time.

Van Etten took the risk of not releasing any singles beforehand so audiences could more fully understand the full scope of the story. She holds a little bit of control before charging ahead, unlocking the connection she craves after experiencing a ceaseless stream of negativity. It's the kind of emotional catharsis all of us can relate to during these uncertian times.

Van Etten isn't wallowing in melancholy, she's accepting the sadness along with the joy, using both emotions to push into a new stage of life. That sense of optimism, no matter how muted it may sometimes be, gives We've Been Going About This All Wrong an air of unguarded hope.

For everyone who complains that the art of the album is lost forever, Sharon Van Etten is bringing it back with a vengeance with these ten deeply felt songs.

While previous Van Etten albums, and pandemic albums in general, carried a somber scarcity to them, We’ve Been Going balances the deeply personal diary entries with moments of levity and hope.

Over the last few years, she’s become one of America’s finest songwriters, and this album shows her continuing that trajectory.

It's both her loudest record and her most inscrutable, burning away some of the welcoming intimacy of her earlier work for a galaxy of cataclysm and stillness all its own.

We’ve Been Going... is above all an incredible sounding record. Across its 10 tracks, it incorporates the Jupiter synths and saturnine beats of Remind Me Tomorrow and the stark, swooning strum of her early records to create truly a cosmic dynamic range, from the softest whisper to the most desolate scream. [Jun 2022, p.18]

We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is a raging bonfire, and although its scale is monumental, it boasts a revealing depth of field, every dramatic arc finely detailed.

On the album, the dark, haunting sound and intimate atmosphere of her early work and the muscular '80s inspired synth-pop of Remind Me Tomorrow sit side by side.

All told, the singer-songwriter’s latest is a testament to her dedication to songcraft and an impressive mid-career statement on restlessness, contentment and everything in between.

All these highs and lows pass in an unvarying, mid-paced indie-rock fug, with little to hold the attention outside her gossamer delivery of candour and insight.

It may lack the immediacy of 2018’s hookier ‘Remind Me Tomorrow’, but this unyielding record is, at times, a powerful reckoning with the age of uncertainty.