Review: Sharon Van Etten’s return to NZ a cathartic experience transcending space, time and soundscapes

Lyric Waiwiri-Smith is a lifestyle and entertainment reporter for Stuff.

REVIEW: Before US songstress Sharon Van Etten enters the stage at Auckland’s The Civic in a hazy smoke screen, a snippet from television series Yellowjackets appears through the theatre.

The clip comes from one of the show’s main characters Nat (Juliette Lewis), reflecting on her time as a teenager surviving a plane crash and being lost in the wilderness – perhaps Van Etten intended the clip to represent the darkness underlying her latest album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, but as the show progresses, a different meaning appears: deliverance.

To hear Van Etten live is to experience something otherworldly, perhaps even holy, as you close your eyes and transcend through space and time, guided by her voice.

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You want to keep your focus on her as she commands the stage with a rockstar swagger that would make any frontman jealous, as the show’s lights beautifully illuminate the stage and the bathe Van Etten and her band in a divine light, but looking forward into darkness with closed eyes, experiencing her music is akin to a meditation – it has the power to release you from all Earthly constraint, physical or mental.

Earlier in the night, New Zealand’s own Joni Mitchell, Nadia Reid, transformed the theatre into a place of worship as her soulful voice echoed through the rows of keen concert-goers hanging onto her every word.

There was a collective gasp of excitement as she sang a rendition of Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You, but the magic didn’t end there as Reid provided the crowd with a lucky peak into a few new songs before gushing over Van Etten (the love was returned towards the end of the show, when the US singer admitted she had been “creeping” as a fan on Reid’s music for years).

The New Jersey native dips and dives between slower deep cuts and danceable hits, never losing the energy of the crowd. It’s an unfortunate misconception that artists with largely slow and dark catalogues make potentially dull performances, but Van Etten is a master of both musical and performance prowess.

Before heading into her 2014 ballad Tarifa, Van Etten dedicates the song to one of the crowd’s biggest and most notable fans – beloved television presenter John Campbell.

Campbell was famously brought to tears during a live cross on TV3’s Campbell Live, when reporter Ali Akram surprised his colleague from the now gone Kings Arms with an appearance from Van Etten, who was scheduled to play the venue that night (Campbell was unable to attend due to work commitment).

As the song, an aching love story, wrapped up, Campbell could be seen wiping his eyes.

When Van Etten and her band return to the stage for their encore, she chokes up as she mentions a recent “huge loss” in New Zealand’s music community.

Her next song, the sombre Darkness Fades, is dedicated to The Clean’s iconic co-founder Hamish Kilgour, who was found dead almost a week earlier. It’s a melancholic moment as she holds the crowd captive as she sings, “it’s been a while since I held you close”.

Before the show ends and reality inevitably sets in, the 41-year-old breathes catharsis into the crowd with a performance of Seventeen, a nostalgic refection on the invincibility of teenage years.

It’s a song I’ve screamed along to at house parties, in cars, in the privacy of my bedroom – is there anything as freeing as being 17? Is there any time in life more painful to look back on? On a Monday night in Auckland, as concertgoers are lifted from their seats in pure emotional release, Van Etten cements herself as an icon.