Live Review: Sharon Van Etten, Tiny Ruins, Heather Woods Broderick

Heather Woods Broderick plays keys and sings backup in Sharon Van Etten’s live band, but her opening set tonight is all looping electric guitar and her rich and lovely vocals.

The looping makes some songs repetitive, but in a way that encourages dreamy trances and sighing rather than boredom. There’s a slightly country twang to her voice at times, which comes as a pleasant  surprise – this is a night full of talented vocalists that are all unique but beautiful, making their sets cohesive but never same-y.

New Zealand’s Tiny Ruins are one of those bands that make you wanna use words like “magical”, “enchanting”, “ethereal” – all that lame shit that you say to try and describe music that makes you really feel something. They’re not pulling any punches on the heartstrings tonight, with the opening combo of Chainmail Maker and Me At The Museum, You In The Wintergarden delivering delicate, beautiful folk right to the guts. They’re unassuming, as all truly great things should be, all looking like that one cool teacher’s aide you had in high school. The way singer-songwriter Holly Fullbrook addresses so many of her songs to “you” makes them feel intimate, like they’re for this audience only, though you get the feeling they’d play the same kind of show if there were five people in the room, or none – the chemistry between the people on stage is so powerful and self-contained.

It’s always surprising seeing how tiny and young Sharon Van Etten is in real life. On record she is a towering presence who’s lived countless years, each one laid heavily on her back. Tonight she’s backed by a full band, turning these often painfully stark songs into more alt-country territory, but still with her boundless vocals and storytelling at the heart of everything. Newer songs like Taking Chances take on way more swing live, provoking some earnestly awkward kind of dancing from the eager crowd, who often start clapping before the songs actually wind down. Halfway through the set Van Etten starts and then stops Nothing Will Change, admitting that she forgot the words, laughing that it’s “not that good anyway” and moving on like a professional while the crowd cheers supportively. There’s so much love and earnest sweetness in the room, from the stage and between the bands as well as from the crowd. So it’s no surprise when Tiny Ruins are invited back up for Every Time The Sun Comes Up as the final encore, a song that’s described by Van Etten as goofy, and, though it does have the album’s only real funny line in “I washed your dishes/but I shit in your bathroom”, with the effortless harmonies created in the chorus it becomes something approaching transcendent.