Hannah vs. The Many’s new project, “Ghost Stories” is a fun ride for the indie scene fans. Hannah Fairchild’s lyric writing reaches out to you and pulls you into a world that isn’t all that unfamiliar, as we have all been through the heartaches in life. You can relate to her songwriting in ways that reach deep inside.
The track, “Poor Leander” is full of what we listen to indie rock for in the first place. Hannah’s voice is very engaging and full of emotion and energy. She riginally wrote Poor Leander in more of a country fashion, thinking to emulate a Joni Mitchell tune, however, when she and her band went back and reworked the song, it turned into more of a punk-style, really rocking tune. It has moments when it’s really guitar driven and then her vocals come in and steal away the song. It’s fast-paced and has a fun beat.
If you are in the mood to slow down a little bit, you have that option too with “Slow Burn”. I really like “Slow Burn”, it reminds me of an old smokey jazz club. I like the way the song can transport you to that club and you can picture the scene. Hannah has a lot of emotion on display in this song. Her lyrics reach out to you and you can relate to the song on a personal level. Not many songwriters are able to do that. Hannah’s voice is very powerful and it’s refreshing to see
an artist go after their own sound for a change.
If “Slow Burn” isn’t slow enough for you, there’s “Nicollet”. We hear more of an acoustic/piano-driven sound in “Nicollet”. There’s a haunting melodic quality to this song that really pulls at you. Her voice and the piano work beautifully together on this song. She really shows a vocal range throughout this EP I wasn’t expecting and it was a pleasant surprise.
This is a great EP and I highly recommend it to everyone.
[ed. note: First I want to thank Liz for her first contribution as a writer for MidTenn. Second, I have to agree with her. As far as my review… I actually loaded “Ghost Stories” onto my Nexus, and if you know anything about how much I value every bit of that 16 gigs of storage, you’ll know that’s that best review I can possibly give.]
