Beautiful, frighteningly overwhelming

Sharon Van Etten plays Chick's Hotel tomorrow. Photo supplied.
Sharon Van Etten plays Chick's Hotel tomorrow. Photo supplied.

The New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based Sharon Van Etten writes and sings about the pain of love and heartbreak with an exactness and openness few can match.

Her songs imbue every note and word with a depth of feeling that at once sounds beautiful and frighteningly overwhelming, an emotional apex at every turn.

It's a wallowing, cathartic deprivation, as easy to find pity in as it is to find power.

On her fourth album, the poised and masterful Are We There (released last year), Van Etten's rawness resonates widely.

Critically acclaimed, the album topped and featured in best-of lists throughout the music world, from Pitchfork to my own list here in Suitable Alternative.

The album is led by the fierce Your Love Is Killing Me, a six-minute post-rock song of singular emotional power. With the focus on Van Etten's tremendously shaking vibrato, lyrically she catalogues the lengths she'll go to be rid of this, the song title as the primary sentiment: ''Break my leg so I can't walk to you/Cut my tongue so I can't talk to you/Burn my skin so I can't feel you/Stab my eyes so I can't see.''

It's a devastating listening experience, one that will surely be just as transformative and commanding in the intimate Chick's Hotel as it is on record.

 

MUSIC OF PHOTOGRAPHY

On Monday, Ian Jorgensen (aka Blink), the man behind underground music brand A Low Hum, will release A Movement: The music photographs of Ian Jorgensen 2000-2015.

A Movement is a selection of Jorgensen's images taken over the past 15 years featuring 1000 photos of more than 300 different bands, including The Mint Chicks, Jakob, Die! Die! Die!, The D4, The Datsuns, The Phoenix Foundation and Betchadupa.

A Movement will be available as a set of 10 full-colour offset-printed photographic art books, and will be accompanied in a typically absurd A Low Hum style with multiple release tour events.

In Dunedin the show will include a rare performance from Auckland indie band Xanadu.

Their first live show in 12 years doubles as a debut-album vinyl release, with a solo set from the singular and introspective Sarah Mary Chadwick, of Batrider fame, Nick Harte's Shocking Pinks, who last year released the exhaustive and wondrous Guilt Mirrors, alongside Mongo Skato and Secret Knives.

Earlier in the evening, Movement: A Film About Touring will also be shown, a visual essay about touring DIY through New Zealand and beyond.

''In a lifetime of niche projects,'' Jorgensen says, ''this is the most ridiculous and personal of anything I've ever produced.''

 


The gigs

• Sharon Van Etten (Brooklyn) with Robert Scott (The Clean/the Bats), Sunday, March 15, Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers.

Tickets available from undertheradar.co.nz. Doors 8.30pm. The Chick's Magic Bus leaves Countdown Central at 8.30pm, the university library at 8.35pm, returning to town after the show.

• A Movement: Dunedin, Saturday, March 28, Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers. Movement screening from 7pm, bands from 9pm. Tickets for each are available from undertheradar.co.nz. The Chick's Magic Bus will be running for both the screening and the show.


 

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