“I think, in general, the older I get the more I try to be calculated with my words. With what’s recorded, forever on the internet,” Sharon Van Etten tells us while discussing her new record We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. “You know, what’s there for people to quote, or for him to find.” The ‘him’ mentioned is her son, and the record a crystallisation of what it meant to be his parent at a time when she, when no one, could ensure his safety.

As we talk, Van Etten speaks carefully and with intention – not from the media training of a seasoned vet, though she may be, but from an understanding that the words she says have an impact beyond just herself, and beyond just this moment. A feeling of resilience in the face of perceived impending doom drives the record from start to finish, wherein Van Etten finds trauma, both immediate and decades old, meeting up with her in the standstill demanded by a global pandemic.

On We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, Van Etten brings us on a woozy journey of highs and lows, and ultimately, of transcendence. On Anything, a fever pitch of frustration on the front half of the album, Van Etten finds herself indignant, sleep-deprived, and self-medicating while on Born, the accompanying track, Van Etten recalls a painful memory of a tattered and violent relationship.

Allusions to vile relationships are scattered throughout the album, in which desire and destruction seem inexorably linked. Recalling these memories, Van Etten says, “I still get embarrassed about looking back, and how long I stayed. You know, in those relationships… I became this tortured person because of the choices I made in my life; I think life is just a series of coming to terms with the mistakes you’ve made.”

Ultimately, Van Etten faces a sobering if terrifying realisation – a career in music, at least as it’s been, may no longer be serving her. On Home to Me, Van Etten finds herself on her knees and pleading, “I need my job/Please don’t hold that against me/You are my life/ Ooh… Don’t that sting?” This feeling is reflected by the name of the album, which suggests the sudden surge of clarity Van Etten felt while creating the work. The sentiment is also mirrored by the radically different circumstances under which it was created: Van Etten recorded the record by herself in the privacy of her garage studio, playing around with the many instruments she’s acquired over the years. Furthermore, the songs weren’t born with the initial intention of being relentlessly toured, she approached songwriting with a mindset of meditative escapism, a retreat from the domestic and national worries of 2020. “I finally had years of touring equipment all under roof,” she explains. “I was able to take all the instruments out of their cases, spread them out, and just let my mind wander and try all the things I had acquired over the years.”

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