Sharon Van Etten, March 25 at the Satellite

I can be really picky about female singer-songwriters (and sometimes not picky enough) but I came around to Sharon Van Etten. Yet another pick from Carla. Van Etten has a lovely but haunting voice, one that may never take her to pop heights but one that will do quite well just outside of the light and for a select audience with good ears. Her voice might even be a little too haunting for some but her 8-song Epic comes in and is just enough to enjoy before having to think if it’s too much (or not enough). She got bigger after that but we saw her early, before she became big enough to, say, play the Hollywood Bowl a few months later (though it was opening for the National and Neko Case). Not that we even wanted her to get much bigger -- seeing her at such a small place was exactly the right amount of intimacy: any bigger and there would be too much distance, any smaller and you’d be in a closet. A bummer that the shows there are short, though some young artists who are headlining might not have enough material to fill out a long set, which most likely applied to Van Etten. Much like her album, it was just enough to get in and get out, enough to leave a mark for a while. This was also the first time that we went to the place since it was the Satellite and not Spaceland but it seemed just about the same place to us. The place is a singular venue in L.A. (though the parking situation still sucks) and it’s good to know that it could live on beyond whatever happened that it’s not Spaceland anymore.

Sharon Van Etten's set-list:
"A Crime"
"Peace Signs"
"Save Yourself"
"Don't Do It"
"One Day"
"Tell Me"
"Tornado"
"Kevin's"
"All I Can"
"Love More"

"Much More Than That"
"For You"
"I Am Bad"