Sharon Van Etten, Julien Baker and Angel Olsen Plumb the Depths at the Ryman

If you visit the merch table at a stop on Sharon Van Etten, Julien Baker and Angel Olsen’s ongoing tour, you’ll find a tote bag that reads: “I went to The Wild Hearts Tour and all I got was emotional.” Of course, anyone who came to the Ryman on Saturday night already knew to expect that. Each artist on the triple bill mines the depths of human emotions — not all of them sad — albeit from different musical and lyrical angles. As we settled into our balcony seats, my wife remarked that she was prepared to watch me get all up in my feelings for the next several hours.

Olsen took the stage first, backed by a band who, as she told the crowd, she was still getting to know. The Asheville, N.C.-residing songwriter released her sixth full-length album Big Time last month, a record that she told the Scene she made for herself as she processed coming out, romantic ups and downs and the deaths of both of her parents. Her set was efficient — so much so that she announced toward the middle that she was adding a song — and awash in the classic-country sounds that are so present on her latest LP. 

Your mileage may vary when it comes to present-day artists working in this style. On the one hand, it’s obviously preferable to what’s topping the country charts, and Olsen & Co. executed it well. On the other — perhaps simply because so many are trying to channel the expressive power of old-school country — it can sometimes feel like an artistic facade, a rhinestone costume that keeps the listener at a distance. Still, Olsen has proven herself over and over to be a songwriter who contains multitudes, and her performance eased the audience into the evening’s emotional theme. Even on happier songs like “Big Time,” the lush country arrangement and the warble in her voice created a melancholic atmosphere. It was an implicit reminder that we are still, collectively, going through it, and it came with an explicit one, too: “How have the past two years been for you?” Olsen asked the crowd.

Next up was Baker, who recently settled in Nashville. She came to the stage alone, wearing a guitar and holding a coffee cup, quickly introducing herself before picking out the opening notes of “Sprained Ankle.” Playing the titular song from her 2015 debut album, Baker introduced her fundamental self, her voice quietly bobbing over electric guitar as she sang the lamenting opening lyric, “Wish I could write songs about anything other than death.” Baker’s latest release, 2021’s Little Oblivions, is much louder, and she informed the crowd that some of her songs were being performed with a full band for the first time. But more instrumentation has not crowded out the devastating honesty of her lyrics, which bluntly yet artfully address battles with mental health, substances, love, loss and faith. Baker is not a chatty performer, and her somewhat shy demeanor in between songs stood in contrast to her soaring vocals and the way her guitar seemed to pull her around the stage. After closing her set with “Ziptie” — “Oh, good God / When you gonna call it off / Climb down off of the cross / And change your mind” — she waved to the crowd and exited the stage as quickly as she’d entered it.

Van Etten, the relative veteran of the group, spent time in Middle Tennessee at the start of her career two decades ago. She closed out the night, which seemed fitting: If emotions were building steadily through the show, her set represented its cathartic peak. Van Etten’s band emerged and launched into the thumping, industrial ’80s sounds of “Headspace” from her latest record We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. The frontwoman appeared to a roar from the crowd and began stalking the stage like an absolute rock star. Van Etten laughed off some technical difficulties, and that synth-heavy and somewhat-haunting vibe stayed strong through “Comeback Kid,” a standout from her 2019 LP Remind Me Tomorrow. 

Of the three artists, Van Etten’s stage presence felt the most dynamic, and she was also the most interactive with the Ryman audience, who she eventually called to their feet. She recalled to the crowd that the last time she’d played the Mother Church was in 2013, when she opened for Nick Cave. That was the tour, she said, when she fell in love with her partner, with whom she has a child; they were in the audience, as were her parents. Van Etten has discussed her latest as a pandemic album, recorded in her new hometown of Los Angeles, and she told the crowd how thrilled she was to be performing these songs in a room with other people. Still, she reached back further into her catalog: Another of the set’s high points was another Remind Me Tomorrow song, “Seventeen.” It’s musically exuberant — and had Van Etten dancing around the stage — but somewhat mournful lyrically, as the protagonist sees in a young person some things that she lost when she stopped being a youth herself. “I used to be 17,” she sang, punching the air, “now you're just like me.”

Van Etten and her band left the stage, but the rafters shook from the packed house’s call for more. She returned and, to the crowd’s sheer delight, brought Olsen with her for two encore songs, including their 2021 duet “Like I Used To.” Rising from our pew afterward, I felt a rush of different feelings. If the kind of emotional examination these artists encourage brings sadness a little closer to the surface, it makes joy and satisfaction easier to access, too.