Sharon Van Etten is not in this photo.
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[5.29]
Juana Giaimo: I really want to like Sharon Van Etten, but I feel that the aim of her music is to be emotional and that is exactly what I can’t find. What do I listen to instead? There is some drama, delivered through sluggish vocals with some normal arrangements and lyrics that really don’t have much to offer — what one hit wonder is she talking about? “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” is just that; another song by Sharon Van Etten.
[5]
Megan Harrington: It’s ironic, but Sharon Van Etten needs a full album to unspool all her melancholy because separated from the herd, her songs are a bit boring. “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” is almost cheerful by her standards (that might be because the “Be My Baby” beat doesn’t allow for much dirge) and it’s still a slower pulse than “So Long, Marianne.” As a single, it’s hard to settle into her mood if you’re not already keening downwards, but over an album a song like this stands in greater relief, its small details are sharper, and its affect more entertaining.
[7]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: I could write a gazillion words but I’ll cut to the chase: the best sad bastard song to have a line about defecating on purpose, ever.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Let me succumb to irrationality: the choice of vocal melody for the verses is fucking terrible, like dumping molasses on a 45 played at 33 rpm speed. She didn’t need to tell us that every time the sun comes up she’s in trouble.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: Sharon Van Etten is to indie singer-songwriters, for me, what Sara Bareilles is for mainstream pop: someone whose success I can’t begrudge, given how little there is anymore (for women), but someone I can’t get into. Specifically, everything she does, someone else does better. “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” is moody and gloomy folk, but there’s moody-gloomier in Marissa Nadler and Chelsea Wolfe and Emily Jane White and Rose Kemp’s domains. For lush-voiced artistry, Thea Gilmore gets zero buzz; blowsy-flat voices like Etten’s aren’t really my thing, but there are so many others, based on how many people’s CDs I haven’t bought. And “I washed your dishes, but I shitted in your bathroom” is an awesome line, but Kristin Hersh writes five more every day with better delivery. Etten has craft, no doubt — just no use case.
[3]
Mallory O’Donnell: Glorious slow shimmy with a tarnished dawnlight sheen that can’t dispel its own languidness. A shame it’s half-intoned, it would have been much better wholly sung.
[6]
Brad Shoup: It hangs you by your wedgie; “people say I’m a one-hit wonder,” she says, “but what/happens when I/have/two?” The bathroom couplet, also, is like ten words riddled with six points of emphasis, but cleaning your hosts’ dishes is standard procedure, right? It’s like a Cat Power cut c. The Greatest, but with the subtext promoted to The Show: gentle Fender, patient kit, wheedly vocals tired of describing, ready to do some dirt. The chorus sounds like a hymn.
[6]