Hannah's Encounters - September 2025
After - Outbound
RIYL: hazy Disney Channel reruns in a hotel room when you're five years old, Hilary Duff, Natalie Imbruglia, Windows XP,
Lots of acts are doing this kind of early-2000s revival, but nobody is as convincing as After except for maybe Pale Waves once or twice. I'm kind of obsessed with how well they nail this sound: "It's an ordinary Monday/You don't know what to do" is an EXTREMELY early 2000s teenage soul-searching lyric. If you have a soft spot for this music, it’s near impossible to listen to this without smiling. They've clearly studied the genre closely, touting themselves as "Massive Attack meets Michelle Branch" and living up to that, though this is decidedly the poppier end of that music. Referencing the synth arpeggio in "The Remedy" by Jason Mraz of all things is an insane pull. What CHVRCHES were for 80s synth pop, this band intends to be for Disney teen pop, and that’s a compliment.
BaileyRP - Four Years
RIYL: Claire Rousay, Mk.Gee, Katie Dey, underscores
This came in with the subject headline "New album submission" and a link to Bandcamp, and I was impressed by the lack of breathless PR copy, just literally a link. The music itself mirrors this modesty; most songs on this album don't exceed three minutes, and most of the songs have few elements. What's there is murky and heavily manipulated, as Bailey demonstrates on TikTok, though there's the occasional electric guitar or saw wave synth to break things up. Sometimes, like "You Win" and "Love Isn't So Lonely", these songs explode into Porter Robinson-sized choruses. I'm picking "Four Years" because I can't resist a 12/8 shuffle, but this whole album is worth checking out if you like this kind of lo-fi pop.
Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 16, 2021
CMAT - Euro-Country
RIYL: Orla Gartland, MUNA, Sam Fender (complimentary)
“Euro Country” is produced like a MUNA song, but written like a "Born In The USA "for Ireland complete with that song's deliberate cognitive dissonance. An Ireland history lesson that happens to come with a massive hook and giant drums (the National's engineer Jonathan Low mixes), opening with a Irish verse before talking about the collapse of the Irish tiger economy. Basically any zillennial who grew up promised things would get better can relate, myself included. I love the way her voice is processed like a pedal steel during the bridge, I love that she references Irish folklore hero Cú Chulainn and Atomic Kitten member Kerry Katona in the same breath, I love basically everything about this song. SOTY material, and it's delightful to see people praise this music instead of dismissing it because of the shiny production.
Autoheart - Indigo Chateau
RIYL: Patrick Wolf, The Crane Wives
This album sounds like anxious gay aliens who received transmissions of Jack's Mannequin songs and had to investigate Earth. I got into this band because of their stunning song "Agoraphobia" and the lead singer’s melismatic delivery, but they have a more mischevious spirit in their new material. It’s knowingly campy even if it’s not necessarily over the top, just melodramatic. My dear writer friend Kristen S. He believes the Lady Gaga/Florence collab “Hey Girl” was meant to be sung by two muppets, and this album has the same energy. Other songs like “Say That” and “Denial” are just as good; this one is my pick for its abundance of hooks.
Promises Land - Young Fathers
Young Fathers pride themselves on not being particularly polished, rejecting mixers who aren’t willing to indulge their midrange-heavy, heavily saturated blend of art pop, R&B, and whatever else they feel like doing. So what happens when you put them on the score to a $60 million movie? The best case scenario: like the film it came from, it’s anarchy on a massive scale. The songs here are not that different from previous soundtrack singles like "Only God Knows", except these songs are less afraid to be polished and orchestral. There’s a lot I didn’t know they had in them, particularly “Remember” during [redacted] scene. It perfectly fits the absolute chaos of this movie. This would be my favorite of the year without Sinners, but that's a proper crowdpleaser; 28 Years Later feels more like someone lighting tens of millions on fire and turning a profit anyway.
Another Sky - Losing
RIYL: Daughter, Wolf Alice, Florence + The Machine
Another Sky viscerally felt everything, so maybe they were ill-suited for a time that demands you numb yourself to get through the day. I got into their debut record right after I started HRT, and the soundtracked my (for better or worse) rapidly sprawling emotions. In a lot of ways, the debut was Hannahcore at its purest: soulful vocals with a deep androgynous timbre! unconventional rhythms and time signatures! intensely earnest lyrics! Even as Beach Day shifted to a more conventional rock sound, nothing with that voice and rhythm section could truly be boring. The band's leaving us with their new EP “Mirror”, and as strong as it is even by their standards, this is the best track of the new bunch. From the more experimental direction of these new tracks, they had much more up their sleeve, and Losing is the best example : a very Daughter-esque call-and-response chorus giving way to aggressive electronic noise rock unlike anything else they've done. As a friend said, Another Sky were “generationally underrated” and deserved a lot better than they got. During their tenure, the band faced homelessness (a consequence of the streaming era + England’s cost of living crisis), a studio flood, and various other indignities. “We’ve been robbed in ways we can’t understand yet or even know”, as sung on fellow EP track “Running”, is correct; I’ll miss their music deeply.
Fletcher - Hi Everybody Leave Please
RIYL: Who even knows
I’m likely not going to listen to the album (allow me not to do my due diligence this once), but I’ve thought about this song so much. The lone single for Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me was “Boy”, a self-flagellating song where she apologized for dating a man. Released during a particularly contentious Pride Month, it’s a dull, tone-deaf ballad, framed as the more mature “real her” away from all the messiness. Hetero relationships can be messy too! Sapphic relationships can be stable! Did we just culturally forget that when Trump took office again? Fletcher did, apparently.
Inevitably, she spent the rest of her rollout doing damage control. This one is self-flagellating in a different way, where she feels left behind as her peers transcended “gay famous” to become A-list superstars. I am fascinated by the entitlement it takes to open a song with the lyric “I sold out Radio City, but I'm not on the radio”, spending half the song bitter that she never quite made it to household name status, even with songs like “Becky’s So Hot” garnering love. That’s probably frustrating, especially since Chappell Roan once opened for her, it’s just hard to listen to even as I admittedly love the sound of this song (the synth in the pre-chorus, the late-song drums, Fletcher's rich lower range). She ends the song by singing “bye to who I’ve been, hi to who I’m next", but you can’t claim to be done with messiness while lashing out at your peers. I would love to see some sort of documentary or lightly fictionalized biopic about the making of this album and Fletcher’s career. Forget being on the radio, this song sounds made by someone who doesn’t want to be famous at all.
