King Hannah

[Thunder Revenant 20,695]

King Hannah is a Liverpool based group formed in 2017, consisting of Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle. Their musical style, which has been compared to artists like PJ Harvey, Red House Painters, Kurt Vile and Mazzy Star, can be described as a mixture of americana and shoegaze. King Hannah go for a gritty, cinematic soundscape which they contrast with tongue-in-cheek-lyrics that center around mundane topics and thoughts and walk the thin line between unease and playfulness. It's centered mostly around electric guitar riffs and leadsinger Hannah's mesmerizing vocals.

"Craig formed King Hannah before Hannah knew anything about it. He had seen her performing years before, but they didn't meet until she was assigned to show him the ropes at the bar job they'd both taken on to get by while still making music. He immediately pestered her to play some music with him, and they started a routine, spending the hours before work at Craig's house, where for a long time Hannah could not pluck up the courage to play him her own music. "That went on for a year," said Hannah, while Craig just waited patiently for her to play. When they finally got to writing their own songs together, everything clicked into place. "It's just about finding the right people. When I go to Craig with some chords and lyrics, he just gets it," says Hannah. "If we hadn't found each other, I don't know where we would be," says Craig."  - Official Bio by City Slang

The duo's first single "Crème Brûlée" came out in 2020, followed by the slightly experimental EP "Tell Me Your Mind And I'll Tell You Mine" in 2021. Their debut album "I'm Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me" will be out on February 25th.

Loud and Quiet on "I'm Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me":
"As debuts go, the band have struck a balance between presenting a raw portrait of themselves through a relatable appreciation for solitude (“I like being on my own most of the day,” Merrick reveals on the title track) and earnest concerns of the future (“I wanna be a mother one day / something tells me… Oh that I’ll be waiting a long, long time”) whilst maintaining some mystique, leaving the listener wanting to know more about them."

 

The label's album preview talks about "the duo’s arrangements grittier qualities sometimes associated with PJ Harvey’s early recordings, or elsewhere with Portishead, whether their first two album’s alchemy of vintage sounds or their later, more abrasive work. There are, for instance, inspired, unexpected echoes of Dummy’s ‘Biscuit’ in ‘Foolius Caesar’ and Third’s ‘We Carry On’ in ‘Big Big Baby’s menacing climax. Merrick’s voice, meanwhile, smoulders, blending Beth Gibbons’ vulnerability with Nico’s mystery and Hope Sandoval’s sophistication, finding poetry in the prosaic as she sets torch songs alight."

 

[CatchTheBreeze 1,681]

I really like this band as well! Great stuff and I hope the album delivers the same quality as their first songs.

[Thunder Revenant 20,695]

The debut came out today. It's a pretty solid piece of work, although I have to admit that the three singles they released beforehand remain the most well-crafted ones with much more creative focus than other tracks on the record.

I reeeeally dig Foolius Ceasar. A lot of reviews compared it to Portishead's Buscuit but I did not really think much about it, since music critics LOVE to compare pretty much anything alternative to Portishead, Björk and Radiohead. But in this case, it was a pretty spot-on comparance.