MOG Editorial Review

Tramp is full of brief titles and deceptively simple music, but Sharon Van Etten has plenty to say, and some subtle surprises are tucked within the shimmering layers of her latest album. "I'm biting my lip as confidence speaks to me," she sings on "Give Out", a moment of hesitation that evokes cold passion and self-discovery, her voice last in a cathartic process that begins with her heart and ends in song. "Leonard" takes the album's theme of sustained guitar tones and matches it with built-up orchestration, while "In Line" uses multiple vocal tracks in order to bring out the lushness of its arrangement. Tramp is rock in the most contemporary, almost gothic sense, its roots showing all over Van Etten's ballads and bittersweet poems, but with creative updates to rhythm and harmony, like "Magic Chords," and beautiful modernist repetition, as on the second half of "I'm Wrong."