sharon van etten

Devin Hoff pays tribute to Anne Briggs through a series of dramatic but somehow faithful rearrangements. Featuring a stellar cast of like-minded Briggs fans, Voices From the Empty Moor looks backwards for inspiration but is entirely contemporary in feel.

There’s a grand tradition of folk and Americana artists recording albums for children, from Pete Seeger and Lead Belly to Jerry Garcia and Laura Veirs, all of which transcend the demographic to appeal to all ages. This is a worthy addition to the list.

The award-winning duo Shovels & Rope announce Busted Jukebox, Volume 3, and share cover of The Beach Boys’ “In My Room” featuring Sharon Van Etten.

Often tribute albums can be overly reverent or lacking in musical coherence. Remembering Mountains successfully avoids both of these pitfalls. In fact, the only disappointing thing about these songs is that we will never get to hear Karen Dalton singing them herself.

Our Song of the Day is from Sounds of the South ft: Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, Megafaun, Matthew E. White performing an old American bluegrass gospel song written by EC Ball.

★★★★★ Sharon Van Etten’s tird studio album Tramp sees a whole host guest collaborators including Zach Condon of Beirut.

A noted highlight of the annual MusicNow festival weekend was a collaboration between Megafaun, Fight The Big Bull, Bon Iver and Sharon Van Etten called Sound Of The South, re-imaginings of the songs recorded by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in his early travels.

This press release just rolled in: Americana-folk warriors MEGAFAUN, have been chosen to curate, perform, and record songs/interpretations of Alan Lomax’s classic recordings “Songs of the South” at Duke University this September. Invited guests feature Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten and jazz big band Fight the Big Bull.

We recently mentioned the forthcoming album from Breathe Owl Breathe titled Magic Central being released on Hometapes. They have released another free track for digestion called “Swimming” which according to Hometapes is already in your head.

I know I only recently posted a live video of Sharon Van Etten, but how can I resist when she gets the Vincent Moon treatment over on La Blogotheque, I couldn’t wait. How he manages to capture so many artists I have no idea, but there is a magic about his camerawork that is unmatched. He went to New York to meet Sharon to do this piece.

We’ve been catching up on news from some of our favourite artists today and came across this recent live performance by Sharon Van Etten. Sharon is due to release her second album in October titled Epic which will be a seven song collection. This video was filmed at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto and it’s one hell of a powerful performance.

Following an Irish immigrant carpenter from coastal Queens to the Catskills and beyond,The Builder is an American existential portrait that explores the gulf between the idea of a thing and the thing itself. Having set off to the New York countryside to construct a reproduction of the earliest of American cape houses, the protagonist (Colm O’Leary) finds himself overcome by an inexplicable fatigue.

Sharon Van Etten will be putting out her second record, a seven-song collection called epic, on October 5th through Ba Da Bing. The track below is the last song off that. If you’ve seen her live recently (like at the Chris Knox Benefit), you may have caught it. In April, the song was covered at the Music Now Fest in Cincinnati by Bon Iver and members of the National.

In honor of Memorial Day 2010, Cat Martino releases her alluring song about Jennie Hodgers, turned Civil War Veteran, Albert Cashier. “Last May (2009), I woke up to read a story on NPR about Jennie Hodgers, a woman who changed her identity to Albert Cashier to fight in the Civil War,” says Martino. “Her story was so compelling, I went straight with my morning coffee to my guitar to write …

La Blogotheque managed to get Megafaun and Sharon Van Etten together in Montreal for a great video session. The whole setting was quiet and peaceful, very unlike some of the other settings they contend with when filming. They were really keen to spend the afternoon with them and listen to their stories and drink coffee but they had to leave for Toronto.

When I first heard Sharon Van Etten’s “Because I Was In Love”, I was moved beyond words. On my first listen I held my breath in stunned silence. How do you even begin to describe in words something that moves you beyond them. There is an underlying beauty to her voice and music that can move people in an unintelligible way. So after seeing the release of this video yesterday, …