Sharon Van Etten’s fourth studio album, Are We There, turns 10 this year, and she’s rolling out a special edition version to ring in its anniversary. Are We There (Anniversary Edition) is out May 31 via Jagjaguwar. A 7″ with an alternate rendition of the single “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” is out physically on August 23. Listen to it below now.
“This version of ‘Every Time the Sun Comes Up’ developed as the band and I were really honing our sound,” the singer-songwriter explained. “We were rehearsing for the We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong Tour, leaning into some of our influences to give the song a more current feel to where we were all creatively at the time. We performed it live and the audience really responded to our new Joy Division-like spin on it. We had the idea to release it to celebrate the Are We There 10-year anniversary and breathe new life into it, which feels like the perfect time.”
This isn’t the first Van Etten album that’s gotten the anniversary treatment. She invited a handful of artists—including Fiona Apple, Justin Vernon, and Lucinda Williams—to cover songs from her 2010 LP for Epic Ten, and arranged a special version of Tramp for its 10th anniversary in 2022.
Van Etten has released two new albums since Are We There: 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow and 2022’s We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. They arrived after two big changes in her life: the arrival of her son in 2017, and a transition into acting, including roles in the Netflix cult-favorite series The OA and feature films like 2020’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always and 2021’s How It Ends. Last year, Van Etten co-wrote a song with Courtney Barnett and covered the Ink Spots with help from The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli.
Revisit the interview “Sharon Van Etten Is an Institution Now.”
