Stream Sharon Van Etten’s New Album We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong

In presenting her first album since 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten took an unusual approach. She released two singles before announcing the album, “Porta” and “Used To It,” but neither one is on the tracklist. Instead, the whole LP is debuting today as a complete document — 10 new SVE songs, unheard until now.

We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is an album of slow-burn splendor, songs that build from somber beginnings to expansive, haunting bombast. There’s a bit of an electronic component to it, a tendency to work towering synthesizers into the arrangements and lace a few digital elements into the rhythms, but at their core these are the kinds of guitar-driven indie-rock singer-songwriter epics she made her name on. Tracks like “Home To Me,” “Born,” and “Come Back” are examples of how truly stunning a Sharon Van Etten ballad can be.

We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, then, is sort of a pivot away from the more aggressively poppy sounds of Remind Me Tomorrow or “Porta,” though penultimate track “Mistakes” does keep the torch burning for the sound of “new” Van Etten. In sum it’s another impressive outing from one of the most reliably great artists in the indie sphere. Stream the full LP below.

We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is out now on Jagjaguwar.