Hana Vu

Hana Vu – Romanticism (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 44:12 minutes | 537 MB | Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ghostly International

Hana Vu’s “contemplative indie-pop captures the disillusionment of young adulthood,” writes NME. Her new LP Romanticism furthers that sentiment as a coming-of-age work that mourns the impermanence of youth and searches for meaning. The acclaimed LA-born songwriter’s been making music since high school, with a full-length debut and several EPs behind her of glowy, brooding anthems of abstraction and emotion. With previous work, Vu welcomed feedback as she went, but while crafting Romanticism, she shielded herself from outside opinion to preserve a singular vision. The result is a unified collection of songs aching with depth and intimacy. Lush and loud, the songs can feel both reminiscent of guitar-heavy late-aughts indie rock, and expansively futuristic in it’s layered synth bass. They pulse with meaning and jolt with playfulness, anchored by her powerful, sonorous voice and underscored by the record’s Romantic era-inspired artwork. “I’m just trying to convey my perspective as boldly as possible. To succinctly crystallize how it feels to be young, but also to be deeply sad.” Under Vu’s magnetic gaze, soaking up sadness has never felt so alive.

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Hana Vu – Public Storage (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 39:12 minutes | 441 MB | Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Electronic, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ghostly International

Signed to her first record deal at 17, Los Angeles singer-songwriter Hana Vu presaged Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodgrigo as a reminder of the very real pains of being a teenager. Her voice as wry and deadpan as Nico and sometimes even Nick Cave, she hasn’t exactly lightened up five years later. Vu describes her own music as “very invasive and intense”—which is a way of saying, it’s not passive listening; even if she doesn’t sound like early Hole, she certainly shares the same raw spirit. “Here are my bruises/ All my dents and my fuses/ Everything that I’ve got to prove,” she sings on the title track, cataloging the things she doesn’t believe in (failure, family); the drums drop out, then return stronger than before, as if fueled by having nothing left to lose. (It should be noted that Public Storage’s horrifying, rotten-mouth album art might even be too grotesque for Courtney Love.) Balanced by a sense of sweeping drama and glimmering ’80s ambience, “Keeper” is dripping with ache: “Oh, I take and steal and throw all my love away/ ‘Cause you’re surrounding me/ Oh, I’m fake, unreal/ And all other evil things you think that I could be.” Sometimes Vu goes all in: “Gutter” is a goth dirge, punctuated by ’90s fuzz guitar; same for “My House,” only with a little spooky levity from what sounds like woodwind. “This is the end of the world/ ‘Cause everything seems to get worse/ And all living things they fall on me/ And crush me into dirt,” Vu sings, making clear this is not Olivia Rodrigo pouting, “Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” She goes positively poppy on the bass-forward bounce of “Aubade,” which has a ring of St. Vincent dancefloor cool to it; but don’t be fooled: “If you stay the night/ I’ll have a new face/ Someone with a bright eye/ Nothing like me.” “Heaven” combines poking strings, shoegaze guitar and a chill drum beat. “World’s Worst” is so light and folky as to be almost new age (there’s even a bit of perky flute, for god’s sake), as Vu lists a litany of self-complaints: “I’m nothing but the world’s worst color … I am just the world’s worst talker … I promise I’m the world’s worst lover.” Getting older provokes existentialism and misery on “Everybody’s Birthday,” a Depeche Mode-like track that combines a stuttering drum beat, brattily sneering guitar and Vu trying out a higher register. She told NME of the inspiration behind “Maker”: “I didn’t grow up religious, but I always felt like, if there is some sort of God, he’s really mean. I felt this really punitive, oppressive force.” Infused with unexpected banjo, the song itself is dreamy, even as she begs, “Can you make me anybody else?/ Maker, make me… Breaker, break me.” – Shelly Ridenour

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