Watch Sharon Van Etten Absolutely Kick Ass On Kimmel

Watch Sharon Van Etten Absolutely Kick Ass On Kimmel

Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten will release her new LP Remind Me Tomorrow. It’s her first new album in five years, and I’d argue that it’s also the first truly great album of 2019. The album represents a vast leap for Van Etten — a venture outside relatively comfortable folksy indie and into stark synth-rock. And last night, we got an early glimpse of how she’ll take those songs to the stage when she performed two of them on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

In at least one interview recently, Van Etten has mentioned that she hasn’t been sure what to do with her hands onstage when she isn’t playing guitar. The answer, at least as of right now: Maracas! Good idea! More to the point, Van Etten, if that Kimmel performance is any indication, is bringing all the intensity of the record to her live show. That means she’s an automatic must-see whenever she’s in your town.

On the show proper, Van Etten sang “Seventeen,” the album’s centerpiece and, to my mind, its best song. She fucking rocked it. When it came time to unleash the full lion-roar at the song’s climactic moment — “I know that you’re gonna beeeee! — she didn’t hold back. I got chills. It was like when Julien Baker first sang “Turn Out The Lights” on Colbert. She just wrecked that shit. And as an online bonus, she also did the Remind Me Tomorrow deep cut “You Shadow.” That was good, too. Watch both of them below.

Remind Me Tomorrow is out — hey — tomorrow on Jagjaguwar. Remind yourself.

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