Sharon Van Etten

When Sharon Van Etten played at the Bowery Ballroom on Saturday night, there was a clear sense of arrival. After a year in which the 28-year-old singer-songwriter released her second album, opened for Megafaun and Jose Gonzalez’s band Junip, and won praise from Bon Iver, The National, and NPR, both Van Etten and the crowd treated the sold-out show as a coming out party.

Sharon Van Etten, A Crime

On stage, Van Etten noted the momentousness of the night—a headlining slot at a top NYC venue—with shout-outs to her family, friends, and fans, and the admission that she was “shitting her pants” and ready to cry. But when it came to the music, she was all confidence, as she sang and strummed songs filled with ache and angst and centered on her raspy, breathy voice and her ragged guitar. While her music tends toward melancholy, Van Etten lightened the mood on Saturday with banter that included jokes about her pink socks, her cinnamon toothpaste, and her New Jersey roots.

Sharon Van Etten, Don’t Do It

With her cardigan and a hollow-bodied guitar that dwarfed her petite frame, Van Etten looked like the archetypal Little Indie Girl. But there’s nothing slight about her music, which fuses folk, country, and rock, or her voice, which combines the lilt of Feist, the talky angst of Liz Phair, and the dreaminess of Mazzy Star.

Most of Van Etten’s songs are slow or mid-tempo heartbreakers without a shred of pretentiousness. Her sincerity comes across in the song titles from her recent record Epic: “A Crime,” “Peace Signs,” “Save Yourself,” “D Sharp,” “Don’t Do It,” “One Day,” and “Love More.” Her lyrics are plainspoken and heartfelt with such declarations as “Everyone thinks I’m a liar” and “I’ll never let myself be in love like that again.”

On Saturday, Van Etten played five songs from Epic and others from her 2009 debut, Because I Was in Love, as well as a handful of new material, and “Damn Right,” a chilling song she called a classic from her open-mic days in Tennessee.

Sharon Van Etten, Love More

Brad Cook from Megafaun joined Van Etten to sing on “Tornado.” Peter Silberman from The Antlers did the same on “Love More.” (In 2009, Van Etten sang on The Antlers’ critically acclaimed album Hospice). And both men returned for the last song of the night, a cover of R.E.M.’s  “Strange Currencies” that Van Etten dedicated to anyone who came of age in the 90’s, which seemed to be most of the audience. (PS. Is there now an R.E.M resurgence?) And if Cook and Silberman lent Van Etten their indie imprimatur, Sharon did the same when she sang with opening act Sebastian Blanck, whose plaintive voice and finger-picked acoustic guitar set a tone of earnestness for the evening.

Sharon Van Etten @ The Bowery Ballroom (1/8/11)

For most of the set Van Etten was backed by an understated band (keyboard, bass, drums and female vocalist) that enhanced, but never distracted from the main attraction. (Epic has a few more flourishes, such as the pedal steel guitar that adds a twang to “Save Yourself.”) On “Love More,” Van Etten put down her guitar to play the harmonium, squeezing a drone reminiscent  of the Eastern-inflected music of The Beatles and The Velvet Underground. (On Epic, she also plays the Indian instrument on “D Sharp.”)

At the end of the night, Van Etten did brush back tears, but there was no sadness in her face, only joy –and perhaps a bit of relief.

Keith Meatto is co-editor of Frontier Psychiatrist. He recently reviewed The King Is Dead, the new album by The Decemberists