Marcel Winatschek

Sharon Van Etten: Magic Chords

What keeps me coming back to Sharon Van Etten is something almost boring to describe—the way she puts songs together. She’s not after flashy or complicated. Her chords are simple, but there’s this exactness to how she places them, like every change is the only thing that could come next. You don’t notice it at first. You just feel the song working on you, and then you realize it’s because of this choice she made about progression, this tiny decision that ended up being everything. There’s a confidence in that restraint. She trusts her voice enough to not clutter up the space around it. No flourishes, no reaching for a bigger moment than the song can hold. Just the chords and her voice, and somehow that’s enough to make something stick with you in a way that all the technical skill in the world wouldn’t.