Remind Me Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten’s first new album in almost five years, comes out January 18th via Jagjaguwar/Rhythmethod.
Throughout Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten veers towards the driving, dark glimmer moods that have illuminated the edges of her music and pursues them full force. On lead single ‘Comeback Kid,’ Van Etten’s “voice sounds almost like Siouxsie Sioux here—deep, bellowing, and fuzzed out at the edge of the distorted signal—and her tone is muscular and triumphant, with a controlled vibrato that suggests someone shouldering into a brisk wind” (Pitchfork). This powerful return comes even further to life with the official video for ‘Comeback Kid,’ directed by Jonathan William Turner and shot in Van Etten’s hometown of New York.
WATCH: Sharon Van Etten’s ‘Comeback Kid’ Video
“As the lyrics for ‘Comeback Kid’ unfolded, I realised I was talking about many selves: the kid, the adult, the sibling, the friend, the neighbour. I imagined a projector streaming over me of memories, unclear if they are mine or someone else’s, confronted by the disorientation of time and perspective,” explains Van Etten. “Jonathan William Turner helped me to convey these struggles of self, forgiveness, and living in the now.”
Turner comments, “The visuals draw from Sharon’s personal archive of photos and videos as the narrative of the song looks back on her past. The elements are then reactivated by an undercurrent of abstract animations. These sequences are also used to frame and obscure her performance, suggesting the fractured identity of someone looking at their past, but also confidently facing the future. Sharon is both audience and projectionist of her memories.”
Written while pregnant, going to school for psychology, and after taking The OA audition, Remind Me Tomorrow was written in stolen time: in scraps of hours wedged between myriad endeavours – guest-starring in The OA, performing in David Lynch’s revival ofTwin Peaks, scoring her first feature film, Katherine Dieckmann’s Strange Weather, and the closing title song for Tig Notaro’s ‘Tig’. The range of her passions (musical, emotional, otherwise), of new careers, projects and lifelong roles, has inflected this album with a wise sense of a warped-time perspective. It reckons with the life that gets lived when you put off the small and inevitable maintenance in favour of something more present.
Using Van Etten’s prescribed references — Suicide, Portishead, and Nick Cave’sSkeleton Tree — producer John Congleton transported the original Remind Me Tomorrow demos, helping flip her signature ratio into more energetic-upbeat than minimal-meditative. The songs are as resonating as ever, the themes are still an honest and subtle approach to love and longing, but Congleton has plucked out new idiosyncrasies from Van Etten’s sound.
