“For You”
from the album Because I Was in Love
2009
iTunes
On her heartbreaking debut, Sharon Van Etten makes a strong case that sometimes the quietest storm is the most devastating of all. Because I Was in Love introduces the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter as a lonely heart who stays up into the wee hours obsessing over what went wrong, a bottle of red slowly going down. Van Etten accompanies herself mostly on acoustic guitar, with the occasional electric and organ adding to the late-night aesthetic, and she submerges her unvarnished voice in layers of ethereal harmony. Recorded by Espers’ Greg Weeks in his Philadelphia studios, the album isn’t exactly lo-fi, but it is so resolutely spare and confessional, it could have been made in Van Etten’s bedroom. She establishes a pervading sense of melancholy with her opening salvo: “I wish I knew / What to do with you / But the truth is / I ain’t got a clue,” she sighs in two breathy lines on “I Wish I Knew.” Forlorn and wistful, the song puts Van Etten in the canon of Cat Power, Julie Doiron, and long-lost folkie Sibylle Baier, but it’s clear Van Etten is drawing on her own heartache. It didn’t kill her, but rather inspired this burnished gem.