“Seventeen” is a single from Sharon Van Etten‘s fifth album, 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow. It got a fair amount of attention when it was released, including a performance on The Late Show with Norah Jones guesting. A song about looking back on the titular age, either through memory or through seeing a teenager who reminds her of herself, it’s a melancholic lyric that is rendered more intensely through the original performance by Van Etten and her band.
For season of AV Undercover, their first in seven years, indie rock artist IAN SWEET, Jilian Medford’s alter ego, was one of the invitees. Medford is a big fan of Van Etten, apparently, and jumped when she saw the song on the list.
Accompanied by Ian Salazar on guitar and programming, Medford strips down the song to its essence, relying on just two guitars – which often sound like one – a programmed beat, a drone of some kind and their vocals. IAN SWEET put the lyric and the emotions behind it front and center. It feels just a little bit inspired by the Late Show performance that was also slower than the original and free of much of the extraneous stuff in the mix.
Even in the big emotional crescendo, it’s relatively understated, with a brief effect on her voice and some extra distortion on the guitar. Though it’s electric, it almost has the feel of an acoustic cover where most of the production artifice of a studio recording has been stripped away to reveal the song underneath.
It really does the song justice. Check it out:
