Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.
As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.
Album: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (2022)
Artist: Sharon Van Etten
Link:
If the lyrics to this album were half as impactful as the steady instrumentation on display throughout the record, this would be a bonafide masterpiece.
Instead, this feels incomplete, somewhat shattering as a fan hoping that van Etten’s sixth album would be a further growth in multidimensional senses.
There are moments of clarity here, but too often they are stifled in favor of a dynamic that leaves songs feeling unfinished. Van Etten’s songcraft, previously hailed publicly as a strong suit, is hampered by these decisions - when you cut someone off at the legs, you can’t be surprised when they don’t move half as far.
But through it all, the bones are strong, and a lot of these songs rip their way through the clutter to find a semblance of something good. The process may be a mess, but the results coalesce into something that I daren’t call beautiful, but nice sounds good enough.
Rating: 7/10
Best Tracks: Mistakes
Worst Tracks: Born