Sharon Van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow

Apocalyptic Mom

Even if I didn’t love the music on Sharon Van Etten’s fifth record as much as I do, I would still want to look at the album’s cover daily. Taken by her friend Katherine Dieckmann - of the filmmaker’s two children - it mirrors the physical chaos of juggling children and work and life, at least in my experience as a mother-of-four. In its depiction of the uncontained sprawl of children in daily play, the image is a counterpoint to the straight-out-of-a-décor magazine homes inhabited by Kate and Anne in Netflix’s Workin’ Moms that defy the sitcom’s claim to show the realness of being a mother and a worker and a lover. Van Etten – now a mother herself - says she pinned up the photo in the studio while recording Remind Me Tomorrow, an album that reveals her extraordinarily rich songwriting hand. “Before I decided the photo was going to be the cover, I used it as inspiration in the studio,” Van Etten told Vanity Fair. “The joke was ‘Apocalyptic Mom’.” Watch the video for “Jupiter 4” and see why Van Etten’s slow-motion, synth-suffused standout is not coming off repeat anytime soon.