Lomelda - Hannah

 

Lomelda

Hannah

2020

Spotify

Hannah is the new record from Indie artist Hannah Read who does by the name Lomelda. This album, much like her other works is crisp clean indie, firmly planted in the bedroom, but with much larger aspirations. Often DIY or bedroom rock can neglect sonic quality for emotional depth, but Read sacrifices nothing on this new record. She manages to harness that indescribable feeling of one person's perspective coming through your speakers, while still making the album approachable. "Hannah Sun" is almost like a private pep talk we are a fly on the wall for. Read ends the song repeating "Hannah do no harm..." over and over almost like a mantra attempting to reassure one's self. Read may seem isolated in her music, but there is always this element of explaining herself to another. This music is not just Read singing to her journal, she wants the subjects of these songs to hear these things even if they aren't around anymore. The songs become a dialogue of what she said and what they said back, but all put through this lens of future understanding. Read's vision is 2020 because all these situations have passed her by, she is not actively participating in these moments which gives her a bit of distance to be able to decipher them in a new way. She also puts a voice to the isolation everyone has been feeling the past seven months. The need to cry, to overanalyze and finally to let it all loose on songs like "Reach". In the end sometimes you just have to yell it out, even if you are making bedroom indie rock. 

Songs later in the record tend to blend together, like a bedroom jam sesh that slowly unfurls itself around you. The longer songs, over three minutes, do tend to drag a bit allowing for long interludes that sound fine, but don't particular move the songs or album forward. When you loose Read's vocal you tend to loose the whole feel of the project. You need that sweet voice reminding you of your own humanity and connection to the person making the song. "Stranger By Me" is like two minutes too long and stands out right in the middle of the album. Read draws a connection between the self and the relation to the whole in such an inspiring way. By the end of the album her extremely "personal" style becomes intertwined with it's relationship to the community as a whole. The album is not just about finding one's happiness, it's about finding that communal happiness that we all desire but can never quite figure out to to obtain. Closeness, something that we all have been denied as of late is the thing we learn to love the most. Closeness both in proximity and in emotion are the things Read wants the most on Hannah, and perhaps they are the things we are all missing. Hannah is a really lovely record filled with spirit and truth, it feels very of this moment while still reflecting on issues that are never going away. 

8.7 out of 10