aaamusic | On 14, May 2012

She looks beautiful in her record’s artwork photograph.
I have never heard of her name.
Hannah Cohen is a New York model (no, please, we don’t need another Carla Bruni), her mother is British, her father is a jazz drummer from San Francisco. Oh, her grandfather, Bertie Rodgers a famous intellectual, an Ulster acclaimed poet. The family photograph’s taken.
After travelling the world and posing as model and muse for several artists (among others, David Salle), she recently learned guitar discovered her voice and started writing songs. Oh, if life was always that easy. New York, the East Village, the art, the parties, the music, the poets. She says: < >.
The talent must be recognised then and possibly by the right person. Here is when arrives Mr. Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, member of Bon Iver and Antony and The Johnsons.
Together with a super little band including Sam Amidon, Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Antony and the Johnsons), Brad Albetta (producer for Martha Wainwright and Teddy Thompson), Doug Wieselman (Laurie Anderson, the Lounge Lizards), and Kenny Wollesen (John Zorn, Bill Frisell) Thomas Barlett produced Hannah debut album named Child Bride.
Don’t Say. The first track. The guitar arpeggio followed by the slow tempo piano announce immediately that we are going to listen to a stream of teardrops, exquisite sadness and heartbreaks. It’s an intimate negation, a confession letter where her beautiful agonizing singing takes perfectly part of the melancholic folk melody. We find the same quiet and delicate pace of loneliness in the following The Simplest. The whispers in Shadows meet pop arrangements and the melodious California is a lovely letter adorned with haunting piano and homesickness. Things change with Boy + Angel, a Doveman cover song, perfect soundtrack for a filmed nightmare. It’s the most impenetrable track of the album, as obscure and daunting as beautiful is the jazzy piano finale. The apex of all the poetic sadness of Child Bride is the ninth track The Crying Game
| how many times, do you think of her | when your heart is supposed to be with mine | so listen my love, my love | my love, life is alone |

A graceful dark gemstone. Just hope it never comes out your shuffle during a house party.
Tracklist

1. Don’t Say
2. The Simplest
3. Shadows
4. California
5. Boy + Angel
6. Sorry
7. Say Anything
8. Carry You Under
9. The Crying Game
10. Sunrise

★★★★★

Pietro Nastasi