I was pleased to find the latest promo video from renowned singer-songwriter and one-time Murfreesboroan Sharon Van Etten in my inbox yesterday. I admit that as a long-time Bucket City resident I'm a little biased (though I'm too young by a semester or two for her to have served me a coffee at The Red Rose), but Van Etten comes by her praise honestly. She's great at writing about heavy feelings without getting weighed down by them:
as The Spin recently mused, "she makes compelling art out of her angst."
The same could be said about the video for "Your Love is Killing Me," from her latest LP, Are We There. Directed by Sean Durkin of Martha Marcy May Marlene fame, the clip follows a young woman played by Carla Juri (who you'll recognize as Helen Memel if you caught "German gross-out comedy" Wetlands at the Nashville Film Festival this spring) coming up with a clever if somewhat disturbing way to give her ex the ol' kiss-off. However, the song's soaring pre-chorus, Van Etten's delivery of which reminds me of Grace Slick's best work, rang a bell:
"Break my legs so I can't walk to you / Cut out my tongue so I can't talk to you / Burn my skin so I can't feel you / Stab my eyes so I can't see"
After a couple of repeats, the reason this sounded so familiar dawned on me: It's similar, very similar, to the pre-chorus from "Violently," one of my favorite cuts by recent Week in Fresh Tracks-featured artist Natalie Prass. To introduce the "channel," as some songwriters call this part of a song, Prass sings: "Break my legs / 'Cause they wanna run to you" the first time, "Break my arms / 'Cause they wanna hold you" the second and "Break all my bones / 'Cause they all want you" for the last go-round. That's pretty hardcore, especially in context with the chorus: "I just wanna love you violently / I'm tired of talking politely / The red is there / It's all over me / It's overlaid / Eloquently." It's also seasonally appropriate, since it comes from someone who fondly remembers LARPing as a werewolf.
Here's a video from YouTube user glorywolf of what is perhaps the first performance of the song ("This one I just wrote yesterday while I was in class," Prass banters), accompanied by Madi Diaz at The Rutledge in 2009:
If "Your Love is Killing Me" is a recent song, so Prass likely penned her lyric first, right? But let's be honest: the likelihood that Van Etten is ripping Prass off, intentionally or by mental osmosis, is very small. Isn't it? Sure, Prass wrote her song while studying at MTSU, but Van Etten moved to New York well before 2009. Prass isn't as widely-known as Van Etten, though that may change after her self-titled LP drops in January. Could the two adept writers have uncannily come up with the same
sparagmaticmetaphor to convey the intensity of their conflicted feelings about relationships?
Discuss!
At any rate, it's an excuse to listen to two great songs with eerie intensity, and I'll take it.
