LOS ANGELES — As she was putting together her seventh and most recent record, Sharon Van Etten came up with a tongue-in-cheek idea for its title. ''Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory,'' she wanted to call it — a reference to both her interest in psychology and a play on the familial dynamics that often exist within a band.
Although most of Van Etten's bandmates have been with her for several years, this was her first time writing songs with them, so playing with that relationship felt apt. But when the indie musician approached her collaborators with the idea for the title and band name, there was one stipulation: ''They said, ‘I don't mind you calling it ‘The Attachment Theory,' as long as we don't have to talk about our attachment styles,''' Van Etten laughed.
As they gear up for a fall tour, announced Monday, Van Etten spoke with The Associated Press about her stream-of-consciousness style of writing and how being a mom has made her more cognizant of how much time she spends on her phone. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: What prompted the change in how this record was made?
VAN ETTEN: Writing as a band was a complete accident. We were rehearsing in 2022 for the ''We've Been Going About This All Wrong'' tour and figuring out how to take this album, which we recorded piecemeal during the pandemic because we couldn't all be in the same room together. I thought the best way to reconnect after recording the album from afar was to rent a house and a studio in the desert and have it be more like a literal band camp, instead of doing one of those sterile rehearsal environments, just to have a way for us to reconnect as people as well as musicians.
As we got to the end of the week, we realized we had gone through the whole set that we were planning for that tour, and I asked the band if they would want to jam. I was so tired of hearing myself. I was very inspired by the sonic palette that we had created together, and I wanted to see what would happen. And in an hour or two, we wrote two songs without really trying. And we laughed it off, we packed our bags and we left the next day. But my engineer recorded those jam sessions, and I remember playing them for my partner at home, saying, ''I think creatively this is the next thing I want to do.'' And so, after we did that first tour for the previous record, I booked a writing session right away and we returned to that same studio and worked for a week with the intention of writing. And it was a very prolific week.
AP: Did you have the lyrics written beforehand?
VAN ETTEN: All of the writing in the desert was from the ground up. I didn't have anything going into it, which I've never done before either. My process from being solo is something that I brought into the session with the band, where I find the melodies first and I sing stream of consciousness.
