Check this out, a best of 2012 list that actually wasn’t posted until the year ended! A typical characteristic of a list like this – composed of the individual lists of some people whose music tastes I enjoy enough to ask them to contribute to the blog – is a certain conservatism (although there are some newcomers ranking pretty high, like Hundred Waters, Purity Ring, alt-J or Point Reyes) with some albums that manage to sneak into the top 10 despite not being the artists’ top moments (GY!BE, Spiritualized, Andrew Bird). Was 2012 that boring or are we the boring ones who only listen to boring music? Have your say in the comments section and post your own lists. Enough with the small talk…
Sharon Van Etten’s Tramp will be reissued in a 2xCD deluxe edition next November 13. The package includes a bonus CD with demo versions of the songs from the album. Thank God I still haven’t bought it – she plays in Guimarães at the Optimus Primavera Club festival on November 30 and perhaps I’ll get it there. Here’s a demo of an unreleased song you probably knew about if you’ve seen her 2010 KEXP session, “Tell Me”.
“We all make mistakes”, sang Sharon van Etten at the beginning of her concert in Paris, last week in La Maroquinerie. In fact, it will be a huge mistake if you don’t run to see her every time you can! Besides of being an excellent musician, Sharon is so lovely… It’s nice how a girl with her arms tattooed and with a bunch of powerful songs seemed to be the sweetest thing on earth when she appeared on the stage with a pencil skirt and an elegant pair of black high heels. She denied during the concert, but I have to confirm: Sharon van Etten is so cool!
After “All I Can”, the first song of the concert, she proceeded with tunes such as “Warsaw”, “Save Yourself” and “Kevin’s”, a song that she confessed had sung a lot of times before.
Actually, Sharon talked a lot during the concert and I loved it more and more because of that. It’s nice to know a bit more about the songs, even if you can guess some things by yourself. When she sings that “You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city, you’re why I’ll need to leave” (not you, obviously), you know that she talks about love, but it’s sweet to hear from her that “Give Out” is a song written for a man that she loved. This song was such a nice and strong one (no, I didn’t cry, but I was almost there when Sharon sang with her heart that she needed to leave. Oh.).
On other side, she made me smile when she talked about her mother and about her hypothetic future kids. Her mum loves “Magic Chords”, which is my favorite song of Tramp, her last album released on February. “Magic Chords” is a perfect song and it starts to play very easily in repeat mode on our mind: “You got to lose, you got to lose, you got to lose sometime…”. It was also on this song that Sharon shown us her magnificent omnichord, a very weird musical instrument with a bunch of buttons that helps to create the amazing instrumental atmosphere on this song.
Another sweet moment happened in the end of “Magic Chords”, when an American girl on the first row asked Sharon about her tattoos. In a very kindly way, she explained to the audience each one of the tattoos that she has in both arms. The tattoo of a guitar on her left arm is my favorite one, because it fits her perfectly.
After playing a couple more Tramp songs, Sharon dedicated the encore to the previous albums, Because I Was in Love and Epic. “She made me love, she made me love, she made me love… more”, said Sharon in “Love More”, the last song of the gig. Yeah, that’s true: after I saw her for the first time last February in a mythic concert – as she and her manager referred after the show – at Point Éphèmére, Sharon made me love her even more in La Maroquinerie. Some girls are bigger than others… And Sharon van Etten is obviously one of the biggest.
New incorporations in the lineup include Refused, Sharon Van Etten, The Wedding Present and Beirut. Full lineup here (around 10% of the complete linup TBA). Also announced was the site of the first and last days of the festival, Arc de Triomf, which will hold free concerts. San Miguel Primavera Sound 2012 runs from May 30th to June 3rd in Barcelona, Spain. More info about the Portuguese edition, Optimus Primavera Sound coming in the next two weeks.
