Sharon van Etten was an indie powerhouse of the 2010s: with her vulnerable yet cryptic lyricism and husky contralto voice cultivating her a niche, yet loyal, following. However, it was her stellar fifth studio album, 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow, that significantly expanded her fanbase. After all, it’s difficult not to be won over by the harsh belting and disillusioned reflections on nostalgia of her hit single “Seventeen”.

Three years later, following three non-album singles experimenting with the more synth-heavy pop sound of Remind Me Tomorrow, van Etten announced the release of her sixth album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. Hoping to “honour the sentiment” of the record and ensure that this pandemic project is first experienced in the way she intended, she released no promotional singles ahead of the album.

In 2022, it is far from unreasonable to be fed up with these “pandemic albums”, where artists experiment, look inwards and express feelings of loss and isolation. Yet there is something compellingly evolutionary about van Etten’s. Certainly, it documents a turbulence of emotional state that seems particular to pandemic life, but this feels like a snippet of a much wider artistic and personal growth that she has chronicled with each album.

“One wonders if these come as words of a restrained optimism or as a desperate plea”

Album opener, and definite highlight, “Darkness Fades” is the prime representation of these intertwined paths. Opening on a gentle acoustic guitar, the track develops into a ballad so full in sound with a message of such profound emptiness. The final lines carry a striking ambiguity: “Darkness fades / The nights are now / Better stay, light / I’m looking for a way / Darkness fades.” One wonders if these come as words of a restrained optimism or as a desperate plea; it is precisely this emotional uncertainty that underpins the rest of the album.

Van Etten explores the agony of maternal adequacy on “Home to Me”, seemingly an apology to her son, where the simplicity of her soft falsetto over a piano and drum sonically grows over the course of the song. “Anything” is an outstanding depiction of apathy – van Etten’s vocal performance does not change throughout the song as she sings about desensitisation to a crumbling world over increasingly intense instrumentals. The middle section of the album is consistently subtle, yet never unimpressive – as always, van Etten’s careful treading between groundings in abstraction and experience while exploring a new theme or angle in each song is enough to gently hold the listener’s hand through.

As the album reaches its final act, “Darkish” sees van Etten completely return to the stripped-back sound of her debut, Because I Was In Love, while gently rising above the spiralling anxiety conveyed in the earlier tracks. However, “Mistakes”, the obvious candidate for what would have been a lead single, is the polar opposite – a pleasingly upbeat concoction of guitars and synths that feels like the happier older brother, or “final form”, of Remind Me Tomorrow in maturity and experimentation within her sound. As she passionately sings: “When I make a mistake / Turns out it’s great, it’s great, it’s great,” it is genuinely impossible not to believe her. The track’s uplifting message and sound make it a strong candidate for one of the best pop songs of the year so far.

The closer, “Far Away”, features enough van Etten’s characteristically cryptic lyricism with a couple of self-referential lines (including a callback to her 2014 album closer “Every Time The Sun Comes Up”). As she gently repeats “Long gone, I’ll see you far away,” the album feels truly wrapped up – the track feels like a comforting reward for listening, a classic van Etten sendoff.

We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong proves that it is not simply another “COVID album”. It is a palette of pandemic anxiety and attitudes that is so distinctively Sharon van Etten. At times, I did miss the “growl” that was much more common on Tramp or Are We There: both the literal “growl” of her voice, given her more restrained vocal performance here, and the metaphorical “growl”, the incompletion and ruggedness that has become a staple of her work. Sharon van Etten also confidently drops the maximalist urgency of Remind Me Tomorrow, in favour of a more understated, yet nevertheless sustained, intensity, unfortunately resulting in some slightly less memorable tracks towards the middle of the album. Despite this, van Etten’s poetic lyricism and musical experimentation within her own style make for an enchanting listen and another outstanding artistic achievement for her catalogue.