Sharon Van Etten @ Fremantle Arts Centre (Front Garden)
w/ Banjo Lucia
Monday, December 5, 2022
Sharon Van Etten’s last two albums seem built for the live arena. The New Jersey songwriter’s transition from cult indie-folkster to brooding electro-rock queen appears almost designed for festival stages, and the bigger arenas she finds herself playing due to their success.
That made her performance at the Front Garden of Fremantle Arts Centre all the more intimate on Monday night. For a start, the bar queues were virtually non-existent as punters acknowledged the school night and claimed a piece of turf with blankets and low back chairs. Those standing during support act Banjo Lucia‘s set were told to sit by security, and the picturesque environment was one of zen and subtly changing colours as the sun went down.
Banjo, so named by her parents John Butler and Danielle Caruana (aka Mama Kin), has talent in her DNA. With a voice that sits somewhere between the arch intensity of Fiona Apple and the unhinged soul of Nina Simone, she looked right at home behind the piano.
Sharing 45 minutes in the life of a 19-year-old from Margaret River, she touched on everything from her crush on Sharon Van Etten (“Don’t tell her!”), to small-town sexism, to the internalised male gaze, and held the audience’s attention nicely. An oversharer from way back, she probably didn’t need to tell us Wicked Game was a cover of a song by an artist called Chris Isaak, but the more she spoke, the more we held out for her to let slip another potty-mouth hilarity.
Nonetheless, it was From Our Eyes that eventually sold us, as she held the longest note since Axl Rose in Don’t Cry. It was quite spectacular – more of this please.
Everything changed as soon as Sharon Van Etten hit the stage. The zen of the evening’s build switched to something more menacing. Decked out in black leather with a bunch of androgynous goth-cum-indie rocker bandmates, the electronic groove of 2020 single Beaten Down got things off to an atmospheric start, with the upbeat Comeback Kid making it a one-two punch.
Unfortunately, the sharp change also shed light on one drawback of the gorgeous venue. As everyone jumped to their feet, the elfish Van Etten became increasingly difficult to see on such a low stage, and punters took to standing on walls, straining for a glimpse.
It took five tracks before anything from this year’s excellent We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, but from there she rarely played anything else. Given it might be her best album and is already polling in several end-of-year best-of lists, this was largely a good thing. Anything was a melodic counterpoint to the hectic start, I’ll Try was vocally impressive, and Come Back was an immediate standout with its soaring chorus.
Van Etten endeared herself with awkward dancing (comparing herself to Elaine from Seinfeld) and a quip about worrying that speaking too much might ruin her image as a “hardened individual.” As if to prove the point, she referred to her partner as her “baby daddy,” only to correct herself, “as in, my baby’s daddy, not my daddy… I guess he’s that too?” which brought plenty of lols. A little dorky and awkward, it was an insightful (and kinky) balance to her stage persona.
Late in the set’s upbeat run home and following this year’s brilliant single Mistakes, she rocked an upbeat version of her alt-folk classic Every Time the Sun Comes Up (the only track lifted from 2014’s Are We There). And it was evident this mode of reinterpreting her older songs in the more upbeat electronic style of the current records has a lot of legs.
Like her last appearance for Perth Festival, if there was a criticism it was a shortish set, and there was a second set’s worth of favourites like Jupiter 4, Afraid of Nothing, Your Love is Killing Me, Serpents, Love More and especially Like I Used To that all missed the cut.
This did, however, highlight the inclusion of fan favourite All I Can (from 2012’s Aaron Dessner-produced breakthrough album Tramp) all the more, complete with its Tokyo jet leg origin story.
With a pair of absolute epics in Born and Darkness Fades to bookend the encore break, it was set closer Seventeen which proved the ultimate victory lap. Given an extra boost by last year’s terrific Netflix series Maid, it’s a song that’s become synonymous with Van Etten’s rise to powerhouse prominence, and the chance to see her up close and personal in Freo made the Monday night sacrifice all the more worth it.
HARVEY RAE
Photos by Alan Holbrook
