Hannah Peel - You Call This Your Home / Song for the Sea

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Customer reviews
Press release

3...according to our Clinton on Fri 01 Oct, 2010.

This is reasonable lady fronted soulful slightly 60's sounding pop music. Not as bad as Duffy, not up to Saint Etienne standards but probably sitting somewhere between the two. Its nice and safe and does the job with efficiency, I'd like to see a bit more daring with the production (by Tunng's Mike Lindsay incidently), its a bit....well....limp. It needs a bit of oomph.

Aside from earning the patronage of BBC 6Music presenters such as Marc Riley and Stuart Maconie, Hannah Peel has entered listeners’ consciousness via tours with David Ford and also The Unthanks, where the prodigiously talented multi-instrumentalist has played as part of the Unthanks’ band. Add in a string of festival appearances, including a collaborative set with Static brethren Table at this year’s Moseley Folk Festival, coupled with TV appearances too, and Hannah’s music has been gaining a heap of exposure. If you’ve heard her single Re-Boxed – which re-imagines a quartet of 1980s synthtastic pop songs on music boxes – you’ll know why. Forthcoming for Hannah is her new album, The Broken Wave, which finds Tunng’s Mike Lindsay accompanying her while also at the production helm, and features strings arranged by Nitin Sawhney. As a bewitching taster, we’ve got two tracks from the record available on limited-edition seven-inch, ‘You Call This Your Home’ and ‘Song For the Sea’. From its loping intro and Hannah’s lilting vocals, ‘You Call This Your Home’ is a sweet ode with pattering rhythms, subtle horns and plaintive strings, all of the elements gradually coming together to concoct a densely layered yet understated folk-pop gem, before being stripped back again. It’s illuminated further still by Mike pitching in on vocal duties, the contrasting tones combining to bring a real warmth and elegance to a hook-filled hit in waiting. On the reverse, ‘Song For the Sea’ goes straight for the jugular. As the arrangement slowly builds – taking in leaping drums, swooning horns and bar-room piano – Hannah’s voice soars, bruised but sensual, on what is equal parts torch song and jazz-flecked folk tale. Barely-there electronics gently simmer away and are used sparingly; no detail is overlooked, and in a song which sounds as huge as this everything is carefully constructed, with rich textures overlapping, and ebbing and flowing, before reaching a rousing climax. Limited to 400 copies on seven-inch, both tracks are different versions from the album cuts. Great listening for fans of Serafina Steer, The Unthanks, Beth Jeans Houghton, Tunng and Hanne Hukkelberg.

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