It began in the California desert, where a moment of magic happened. Sharon Van Etten, long accustomed to solitary songwriting, found herself in an unexpected creative communion with her bandmates – drummer Jorge Balbi, bassist Devra Hoff, and Teeny Lieberson on keys and vocals. What started as a jam session while on tour quickly evolved into Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, an album and moniker that explores the weight and wonder of connection – how we hold onto others, how they shape us, and the delicate balance of collaboration and autonomy. “It was to clear my palette. Within an hour or two we’d written two songs without trying,” Van Etten shares of that initial spark. The conception of this album was an act of profound connection, where every sound and every pause became part of a shared, collective narrative.

Recorded at London’s Church Studios with producer Marta Salogni (Björk and Bon Iver), the record reflects a departure from Van Etten’s past work, embracing darker, more experimental textures with atmospheric synths and brooding electronics. The tension between intimacy and distance plays out across the album, from the aching urgency of Trouble, which grapples with the friction of relationships, to Live Forever, a meditation on the desire for eternal connection and the fragility of time. Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is an exploration of what it means to tether yourself to another – emotionally and creatively. We speak to Sharon and Devra Hoff below.

J.L. Sirisuk: You’ve had different iterations of the band in the past. What was it that made you want to collaborate on this new level?
Sharon Van Etten: I’ve been playing with everyone in the band at different junctures. I met Devra [Hoff] in 2018, just after I had finished making Remind Me Tomorrow. Jorge [Balbi] came in just after that for the drums. I met him through Charlie Damski, who was a multi-instrumentalist who was brought on for the same tour – he’s since left to play with Lana [Del Ray], I met Jorge through him, so I feel we got a good deal. I’ve known Teeny [Lieberson] for fifteen or twenty years, we came up in New York around the same time and played a couple of shows together over the years, but I was also just a fan. As I was looking for a new synth player to fill the role that could also sing, she was the first person that came to mind when we were talking about touring for We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. Rehearsing for We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong was the first time we’d all been together in a room since Covid because we recorded that record from afar. We were finally able to be in one space to figure out how we were going to translate the record to a live setting.

I rented a house with a separate studio and we had a week together where we would have breakfast, rehearse, break for lunch, rehearse, and then break for dinner. It was very familial. We got through all of those songs and still had some time at the end of the week. I felt confident in the work we’d already done, and I was like, “I’m tired of hearing myself, can we just take a break and then come back and just jam?” It was to clear my palette. Within an hour or two we’d written two songs without trying – Southern Life and I Can’t Imagine. Even though it was very fun, very light-spirited, I walked away with a couple of demos in my pocket, the little fire burning, knowing it was something I wanted to return to.

“The subconscious lyrics coming out were from our collective conversations and experiences…”

JLS: And that was the spark. How did it feel during those jam sessions?
Devra Hoff: It was very liberating. That same week that we were up there rehearsing and learning songs, we would all make dinner for each other. One night Sharon was like, “Instead of putting on random music, let’s all play our own music for each other.” Which to me was really special because I was like, “She’s seeing us as creative people.” Sharon and I had already toured and become friends, but I could feel that we were taking it to a different level in terms of respect for us as creative people. It helps me to feel liberated. There’s a lot of self-censorship that comes in music: I can’t play like this, I can’t play a disco part – it’s like, why not? In that way, it felt more open than writing sessions often feel. It felt very open, and then the sculpting and fine-tuning came later.

JLS: After writing those first two tracks, did you decide to dive into something new – was there a vision going into this record?
SVE: My partner used to play drums with me, and now manages me. As soon as he heard those two songs, I had an inkling like, “I think I want to do that again.” He was like, “You definitely should. That’s your next thing, that makes total sense.” Normally when you tour and have a break, everyone goes to their respective homes and replenishes. But for me, and also my partner Zeke [Hutchins], he was like, “Now you need to go. You guys are fresh, you are fired up. Use that time, because you’re in a zone.” Very quickly after the tour, we went back to the studio, to the same place because I loved the situation. You feel very connected, but also because of the desert, you feel isolated. We’d write three songs a day. My process is kind of like, “Let’s get the form, everyone’s getting these parts but I don’t want to fine-tune everything. Let’s save some of that for the studio when we’re properly recording.” To me, this is still the writing stage. I would say I wrote 50 to 75 percent of the lyrics, but as soon as I knew what the arc was, I was like, “We still feel a fire, let’s keep going.” It felt very natural. I hadn’t had a band experience before, I’ve had writing sessions with maybe one other person, but it wasn’t for my music. It all just happened fairly effortlessly. Am I imagining that?
DH: It was super effortless and surprising how much we came up with. It was varied but [all] moving in a similar direction, it felt like different chapters of a book, we weren’t writing the same song over and over. It was a very prolific period.

“I walked away with a couple of demos in my pocket, the little fire burning, knowing it was something I wanted to return to.”

JLS: Sharon, you mentioned writing 70 percent of the lyrics. Writing alone is one thing, how was it allowing others into the process? Was it vulnerable or freeing?
SVE: I definitely felt vulnerable the entire time, but not in a debilitating way, because we all felt so much trust and no judgment. My style of writing melodies and lyrics, they usually come simultaneously, a stream-of-conscious. What helped me step outside myself a little bit was that it wasn’t just my narrative, the subconscious lyrics coming out were from our collective conversations and experiences. The first song Live Forever was after Devra and I went for a walk. I had just read an article about an experiment done on mice where they were injected with some elixir and it replicated the cells that when they die off cause aging. So they replicate these cells and it’s like an anti-ageing drug, a reverse age process that they’ve discovered, and if you take it at the age of 50 it can reverse your ageing, but if you take it before that it can have the opposite effect. Devra and I got into this really uplifting conversation about what the world would look like if nobody died and if you could live forever, would you? We literally open the door and the synth base is going and Teeny falls in with the synth line and the first thing out of my mouth is, “Who wants to live forever?” That’s just one example of how discourse and conversations would come through in these lyrics.

JLS: Why did you decide to work with Marta Salogni on this record?
SVE: I met Marta randomly at a friend’s wedding, we were seated at the same table and realised we had all these friends in common. I just I fell in love with her spirit and knew that she understood where I was coming from. She’s an artist in her own right and works a lot with synthesisers and tape loops. She’s way more left of centre, which is always what I lean towards. I reached out to her about working together and she asked me what my goals were for the record and the kind of environment that I wanted to work in. I told her that I wanted us to all be in a live space so that we could keep that connection happening. The number one goal for me was that we were making a band record, and I wanted to make sure that we were producing it together and that everybody felt heard. She understood that right away.

JLS: It sounds like the experience of this project has been liberating because of that trust. When you listen to the record, is there any track in particular that jumps out?
DH: For me, the first one that jumps out is Trouble. Everybody else had gone to bed but Sharon, Josh and I were all up. They were in the other room or outside because the desert at night is so beautiful and inspiring, and I was in the room practising and had something in my head, some little part. Sharon came in and she was like, “Keep doing that.” Then Josh came in and started playing the drums and we all came up with this very interesting gem of something. That was exciting. The next day we started playing with everybody and Teeny immediately came up with the keyboard parts that sealed the deal. That song is very special to me.
SVE: I guess it would be Live Forever, because of the arc on that one. Also dynamically it introduces everybody. Every time we take it to one level, it then goes to another. It summed up this creative spirit that we had, we were letting each other be. That one felt like it magically appeared without forcing it to be anything. I was able to perform and react to what everybody else was playing. It was this sonic conversation that happened very naturally.

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is out now via Jagjaguwar Records