Sharon Van Etten Previews First New Album Since 2014 with the Appropriately Titled “Comeback Kid”

Sharon Van Etten has shared her new song “Comeback Kid,” the first single off her forthcoming album Remind Me Tomorrow, out Jan. 18, 2019, on Jagjaguwar. The album is her first in nearly five years, following 2014’s Are We There.

“Comeback Kid” is the sound of glimmering street lights flitting by on a nighttime power-drive, a thoroughly darker and more driving sound than her work on Are We There. Where that album found Van Etten reveling in the slower moments of transit, “Comeback Kid” feels like something more urgent, a flight in which there’s no time to enjoy the ride. The lyrics give weight to this feeling of escape: “I’m the runaway,” Van Etten sings over heavy synths and a motoring drumbeat. “Don’t look back / watch me run away,” she commands during the chorus.

The song’s frenetic energy is informed by the changes Van Etten was going through during the writing of Remind Me Tomorrow. The songs came together while she was pregnant, going to school for psychology, and working on various film and TV projects. That sense of working on borrowed time is felt in the song’s roaring admonitions of complacency. “I want to be a mom, a singer, an actress, go to school,” Van Etten says in a statement. “But yeah, I have a stain on my shirt, oatmeal in my hair and I feel like a mess, but I’m here. Doing it. This record is about pursuing your passions.”

Check out “Comeback Kid” below, along with a Paste interview with Van Etten during the 2011 Bonnaroo Music Festival and her 2010 Daytrotter Session. Find the full Remind Me Tomorrow tracklist and album art, and Van Etten’s tour dates further down.

Remind Me Tomorrow Album Art:

Remind Me Tomorrow Tracklist:
01. I Told You Everything
02. No One’s Easy To Love
03. Memorial Day
04. Comeback Kid
05. Jupiter 4
06. Seventeen
07. Malibu
08. You Shadow
09. Hands
10. Stay

Sharon Van Etten Tour Dates:

October
06 – Austin, Texas @ Austin City Limits Music Festival
09 – Morrison, Colo. @ Red Rocks w/ The National
14 – Oakland, Calif. @ Treasure Island Music Festival