Lomelda – Hannah Album Review
It will be great to see her future output as she is without a doubt one of the most important indie folk artists currently out there.
Lomelda is an artist that I’ve always been fond of. In the short space Hannah Read has been recording as Lomelda, she has released five albums, with Hannah as her fifth. This new album sees Lomelda in a similar light to her previous work but brings a maturity and attention to detail that felt missing on her previous projects. The album was developed by Hannah and her brother Tommy Read at his studio in Silsbee, TX. Over the course of a year, it was recorded three different times before Hannah classed it as complete and you can definitely pick up on this attention to detail.
The album opens with ‘Kisses’ a simple piano driven track with intimate vocals right from the get go. There’s something about Lomelda’s vocal delivery that’s just so heartbreaking. You feel desperation in her voice, complimented by the repetitive stabby chords. Midway through, blissful acoustic guitar-picking shines through with its gorgeous treble driven warmth. The track fades out into a plucking abyss.
The following track, and lead single from the album, ‘Hannah Sun’ is definitely one of the most powerful tracks on the album. Not only this, the melody is so catchy you will find yourself drawn back. ‘Sing for Stranger’ is a brief instrumental that feels pitch shifted down it’s so thick. This very quickly ends and blasts straight into ‘Wonder’, a track that nears whiney in its vocal delivery but there’s a subtle aching pain to be heard within this performance before the track ends abruptly.
‘Polyurethane’ is one of the more somber tracks on this record. Lomelda speaks of walking into traffic and it’s hard to truly understand what this metaphor is meant to represent. Its successor, ‘Reach’, seems like the kind of track that you could picture as a B-side to an early Weezer album (back when they wrote good albums). It’s got this undercurrent of moodiness that really gives the track a beautiful intensity. The chorus of “It’s Lomelda” reads like a list of favourite artists. Perhaps notably, the first three bands listed feature a wife and husband.
‘Stranger Sat by Me’ is another piano-led track. I love the way the instruments kind of twinkle in and out of each other towards the end, with many notes getting cut off short or bent. ‘It’s Infinite’ has such a cute melody in the first half of the track and its eventual crescendo into the repetitive lyrical mantra of ‘missing’, where you can’t help but feel this loss that Lomelda is trying to convey, is fantastic.
‘Hannah Happiest’ is among the most beautiful tracks on this record. The melody and arrangement are honestly gorgeous. Though I definitely wouldn’t class it as happy as the title suggests. This purposeful positioning of instruments in this arrangement makes for excellent song writing, especially with the crunchy piano melodies peppered in towards the end.
On ‘Both Mode’ you can feel this deep aggression from the forceful strumming on the track. It’s like music for pissed off people; midway through the track this feeling dissipates, replaced with delicate guitar strums to pave way for a musical defeat and release.
’Big Shot’ is one the shortest tracks on this record and seems almost underwritten compared to other tracks. There’s not enough to say, sadly, after the brilliance heard so far.
‘Tommy Dread’ sees Lomelda singing ‘Oh god’ but, maybe deliberately, it almost sounds like she’s actually saying ‘no god’ as the track progresses. Lomelda repeats a mantra of ‘All You Got’ towards the end of the song, with each repetitions seeming more and more painful. Maybe she’s referring to herself as the only one she’s got and not god? The last track on the record, ‘Hannah Please’, is a short and sweet track. These lyrics seem written in a way to give you the feeling Lomelda is speaking to herself, giving herself a pep talk. Saying that she will ‘be sky somehow’, and this repetition of ‘somehow’, at the end creates this feeling that she doesn’t confidently believe it but is still saying it.
This album is warm and pleasant. Lomelda has optimism in her lyrics and imagery that surprises after listening to her often somber music. There is a confessional nature to the album — you really feel like you’re living through some of these experiences with Lomelda. Though this record is definitely Lomelda’s most ambitious, there are still a few too many moments where the songs feel underwritten or simply unnecessary, The strongest moments on this record really shine through. And ultimately this album is a strikingly positive step forward for Lomelda. It will be great to see her future output as she is without a doubt one of the most important indie folk artists currently out there.
