#speck mountain

[musicwithoutborders]

Speck Mountain, Midnight Sun I Summer Above, 2013

[ancientmyths]

[lovingsabotage]

Speck Mountain - Backsliding

[theproverbialneedle]

[colderthancreation12-blog]

If you listen to dream pop I promise we will be friends.

[fyeahsharonvanetten]

[onogucci]

I wanna go where that river goes…backsliders under tow. And you can lead a girl to water but that girl is gonna take you to her father, to the only one I owe, how he mistreats me so. My guy got a wandering eye, yeah my guy's got a wandering eye.

[sean-neumann-archive]

Sharon Van Etten Plays Intimate Set at HighDive

Sean Neumann | buzz Magazine | October 15, 2014

The clanking of glasses as Sharon Van Etten began to sing “Afraid of Nothing” must have made the 33-year-old singer-songwriter feel at home.

Five years ago, Van Etten was still playing smaller shows – “to five wasted cowboys,” she told buzz Magazine in an interview before the show – and the sounds of dishes in the background of her sets then were all too familiar.

It was around that time she opened for Speck Mountain at the Illini Union Courtyard Cafe on the University of Illinois campus, still playing all alone – just her, her voice, and a guitar. Since then, the New Jersey native has grown into a national headliner, traveling with a five-piece band that converts each of her songs to life on stage and hammers out a full sound that equals her powerful voice.

While Van Etten noted she hadn’t been to the Champaign-Urbana area since 2009 – although she said she’s always wanted to since her friends frequently traveled from Tennessee to Illinois to play house shows in CU – the crowd at the HighDive in downtown Champaign was welcoming enough to make it seem like she was a regular.

Van Etten played a well-rounded set, closing with an aggressive version of “Serpents,” but interspersed the set with balance – playing slow ballads from her new record (“I Love You But I’m Lost”) while also mixing in higher-tempo, electronic-fueled tracks “Taking Chances” and “Our Love.”

The band’s set stayed mostly with tracks off 2014’s Are We There, but stayed away from the single “Every Time the Sun Comes Up.” If anything, Van Etten’s set helped prove the depth of her latest record and continued to show why she’s continually on the rise one show after the next. - Sean Neumann