It’s a voice that can bemoan “your love is killing me,” and at the same time be absolute proof that life is good. Like Roy, she can sing with the kind of quaver that reveals whatever beauty there is to see in the rawest grief. It’s the perfect milieu for Van Etten to sing like she’s holding nothing back. On a record with a three-word title that contains multitudes (Do we exist? Have we reached those goals that we set? Is this the end?, etc.) the production is appropriately reserved-yet-bottomless, a mix of chiming Americana and muffled electronics that sounds like Raising Sand getting lost on a foggy night.
“I need you to be afraid of nothing,” she sings on the record’s first song, her voice leaping into a yodel on that second word like an eagle peeking above the cloud line. The Brooklyn transplant warranted comparisons to such hallowed figures on her fourth album, a hypnotic collection of songs about need, and all the stupid and callous ways that others fail at fulfilling it.
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