Hannah Jadagu is a Texas-based producer and sound artist who records and mixes all of her material at home on an iPhone 7. This is not an ad for Apple, or an endorsement of their products (However, if Apple wants to give us [as in me] money, we’ll take it!), but is worth noting due to how absolutely lush Hannah’s songs are capable of being. It’s hard to imagine how her debut EP What Is Going On? (not a 4 Non Blondes reference as far as I can tell) would have benefited from having been recorded in a more traditional studio space. This is due to the delicacy and intimacy she displays, and the nearness which her songs achieve in their presentation. It sounds like Hannah is in the room with you. Maybe in the corner. Possibly behind a chair. Cooing into her phone. Adjusting the settings and then easing into another take. That’s not quite true, actually. Hannah’s compositions are pretty seamless. You don’t get the impression of her struggles from these tracks besides what she tells you, and in that regard, she is not shy.
What Is Going On? opens with “My Bones,” a meditation on the media coverage of black women’s disappearances and murders, both in the US and around the world, and how little knowledge of these vanishments and deaths seem to impact the lives of those how are not directly touched by them. Elsewhere, Hannah dives into her anxiety around school and the shittiness of growing up on the honey-cloud dream brush of “Sundown” and the soft-footed stride and keen-minded R’nB closer “Bleep Bloop” with its haze-cutting clip of carved pine beats. Hannah’s style of dream-pop can be easily paired with the likes of Claud and Soccer Mommy, falling into that sweet nitch of Cocteau Twins-revival that is primarily concerned with unpacking the more ethereal parcels contained within that band’s catalog. Don’t get it twisted though, there are quite a few catchy bops on this EP as well, most notably the sugar-high shoegaze of “Time Too Much” and the Best Coast seeking harmonies of the title track.
You can buy and stream Hannah Jadagu’s debut What Is Going On? below via Bandcamp:
Get a copy of What Is Going On? from Sub Pop here.
