Sharon Van Etten On Being In A Band, Motherhood & Therapy – ‘I Didn’t Know I Had PTSD’

Ahead of her band’s tour of New Zealand in November, Sharon Van Etten talks to Varsha Anjali from her garage home studio in Los Angeles.

“I know how hard it is to just feel like a hired gun,” says US musician Sharon van Etten. She’s talking to Viva via Zoom from her garage home studio in Los Angeles, ahead of her November New Zealand tour.

She’s surrounded by some of her favourite instruments and inspirations as she talks – her synthesisers, like the Jupiter 4 and Korg Delta; pictures of Billie Holiday drinking whiskey, her friend screaming out of a car, an original of the Are We There album cover Van Etten took herself, a cheeky-faced Muhammad Ali, Agnes Varda, Frida Kahlo and a mood board.

Having released six studio albums as a successful solo artist, Van Etten’s lyricised, open-chested honesty has touched millions, including John Campbell (whom Van Etten says she is “tied to forever ‘cause I feel like he understands me”).

So it was a surprise when, in February, she decided to become one of a quartet, releasing her seventh studio album with the musicians who had previously served as her backing band.

Referencing the psychological concept as well as the closeness of the group, the new album and the band are both called Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory.

“We had all gotten so close as friends just as much as collaborators,” Van Etten says.

She and keyboardist Teeny Lieberson, drummer Jorge Balbi and bassist Devra Hoff had holed up in a detached studio of a rented house for what Van Etten calls “a literal band camp” in 2022.

Gathering together for the first time since the world locked down due to Covid, they ate, they swapped life updates, they rehearsed Van Etten’s sixth album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong., which was produced in her home studio. And it was then that she knew she wanted to commit further.

“I wanted to show them ... after going through something like Covid and recording a record from afar on the previous record, that I wanted to invest in them.”

As soon as Van Etten got a break, she booked the same place and the band jammed again. They wrote 14 songs in a week.

While Van Etten admits the move to become a band was nerve-racking at first, it was also easy for her.

“It was pretty effortless once I let go,” says the 44-year-old, adding that she believes their live shows are “better than ever” because everyone is much more invested.

This relational confidence is reflected in the record’s soundscape and the spaces it dares to explore. The emotions are in battle. But there’s plenty of light in its bones.

Van Etten’s transcendental chords and Lieberson’s witchy synths form a powerful reckoning in Live Forever. The album’s magnetic opener, inspired by a conversation she had with a friend about an article on an age-reversing science experiment, expresses a sense of “spiralling”, Van Etten says.

Trouble has a nostalgic feel that tastes deliciously of The Smiths, Cowboy Junkies and Siouxsie And The Banshees. Jorge Balbi’s drums pound deeply over and over in I Want You Here, with Devra Hoff’s delicate bass leaning to a kind of ethereal slowcore that’s both dreamy and heartbreaking.

New Zealand audiences will experience these songs performed live when the band tours Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland in November.

Although she’s been here three times before, Van Etten says she would like to stay longer on this visit.

“I’m trying to figure out a way to ... have my family meet me out there and maybe just spend a little bit of a holiday there. But we just have to check our school calendar ‘cause my kid is now in real school, so it’s harder to schedule around it.”

On previous visits, she recalls visiting Karekare on Auckland’s west coast on a stormy, foggy day.

“I still have a video of us walking on the beach and hardly being able to even get a video because it was so windy, but it was really beautiful, like very dramatic.”

Like many parents, Van Etten is concerned about the state of the world and its impact on her only child, an 8-year-old son whose real name she has never publicly revealed.

The intense melodies of the song Southern Living on the new album echo this, if not scream it.

“My hands are shaking as a mother / Trying to raise her son right” sings Van Etten, one note after another, like the ringing of a bell to warn of danger.

“There’s a lot of frustration and anger [on the album], but there’s also a lot of hope,” says Van Etten. “We’re creating these safe spaces for people to feel all these feelings about how frustrating the world is right now, but we’re also creating a safe space to have a community.”

She shares her son with former manager and now-husband Zeke Hutchins. The couple don’t let their child own a device, but sometimes he is allowed to watch PG-13 films, as his parents would rather be present and discuss it, “than going down a YouTube or a TikTok rabbit hole of just short form”, she explains.

Her son isn’t separated from her music duties – he comes along for the ride. He’s even credited on the song Idiot Box for the additional drums under his chosen pseudonym “Croissant Man”.

Before she had Croissant Man, Van Etten was worried motherhood “wouldn’t click” for her. Those fears melted quickly.

“I felt like I had an understanding as soon as he was born, how connected we were in this other way,” she says. She says she realised: “My only job is to allow him to be”, then quickly confesses she has “no idea” how many parents feel even when things are going right.

Beyond her creative pursuits, Van Etten is gnawing at her psychology degree after a two-year hiatus. She says she is two general classes away from potentially pursuing a master’s degree, and while she’s still educating herself on therapy styles, she knows she wants to work with college-age students.

“I feel like at that age, 18 to 21, it was a very formative time for me and a period that I probably was the most lost ... I hadn’t known I could speak to somebody.”

Van Etten was in her early 20s when she saw a therapist for the first time. She had just moved back home with her parents for a year before heading to New York. She says the therapist was able to put a name to things she was going through.

“I didn’t know I had PTSD from prior events that happened, and she was able to help me manage my anxiety without needing medication,” says Van Etten, who has previously spoken about being in an abusive relationship with a musician when she left home at 17.

Not only did this therapy have a significant impact on her day-to-day life, but it also cemented her interest in the field.

“There were certain exercises that she taught me that helped me learn how to be able to walk in a room.”

It wasn’t until later, when she was already pursuing music and meeting fans, that Van Etten thought she wanted to take it further. With so many fans connecting to her cathartic artistry, they sometimes share their own vulnerable experiences with her. It’s common when this happens that people get triggered with their own traumas – “Trauma can trigger trauma,” she told Viva in 2022.

Has it become easier to manage those boundaries?

“I’m very careful,” she says. “I wondered if there’s actually a class on boundaries because I just think there’s so much grey area, especially with how people can reach out and communicate now in different forms”.

The goal in the end is simple: “I want to learn how to understand what [the problem] is, and I also want to learn how I can utilise my skillset to help people.”

From new music and being a mum of a young child to studying at university, Van Etten has a lot going on. But she has a firm grip on her peace.

“Family life is pretty grounding,” she says. “Another extension of my family is my band ... we just go to the beach, go to the park, go skating and try to have a regular routine with exercising and eating as healthy as I can ... I think those things like normalcy and connection keep me grounded.”

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory are on tour in New Zealand this November.

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