A Beautiful and Honest Release from Hannah Sommer

An album release from Hannah Sommer delivers such a lush and unique brand of honesty that each track on the record is something that you end up getting attached to because they each tell individual stories, and from a very personal point of view so, the record is like a concept album where each of these tracks are a chapter of her life to an extent. Or at least, that's how I picked up on it and it felt amazing to travel through these stories and experiences with her because of how detailed and honest she was about everything.

The Time is a Strange Friend album comprises this textually enticing and flowing soundscape that breeds a dream pop and Indie pop approach but does so with different forms of instrumentation and also by using her vocals almost like an instrument itself at times.

This is one of those albums that you should be listening to from beginning to end, all the way through simply because again, these are stories and some of them even interconnect with each other.

If you listen to one or two songs from this record you get a little bit of a glimpse of what you can expect but it gives you nowhere near the full spectrum of what the entire album has to offer as a whole.

These are in-depth memories really and they're so connective that they can even cause members of your own to pop into your head almost as if the songs were written just for you even though you know they weren't.

This is part of the beauty of a record like this one. It's got that endless connectivity to the listener so that you too feel strangely nostalgic listening to it because you know she's being nostalgic performing it.

These are detailed and have these inner thoughts and feelings that come out and some of them are based on times when she was a young child, so you wonder how long she's held on to these kinds of feelings, emotions, thoughts, or memories.

I find this completely beautiful and the way the record is built, composed, and put together has a dreamy and fast undertone that puts together some outstanding guitar work that is dripping with delay or reverb effect at times and creates an almost cinematic and emotionally driven feel and vibe.

Of course, that's the whole aesthetic of this record. It's very emotionally driven and looking back on different times in her life and what they actually meant to her, how they impacted her life, and how all of these things were part of how she became the person she is today.

Again, listening to the entire record is the way to pick up on things like this but if you listen to a few songs, you still get the idea of how these are memories or situations from her past that affected her, and she's held on to these.

Because of this, it feels like this must have been somewhat cathartic for Hannah to actually write and record but again, for the listener, it's very relatable a lot of the time.

This was more of an experience than an album and it feels like reading a good book or watching a film because you're pulled into this person's world and her story.

You're no longer sitting where you're sitting. Your surroundings are gone. And you're just in these stories and these memories and it's quite intense at times but not in a bad way.

It's actually intense in an amazing way because when the record is over you have to reacclimate yourself back to reality again.

I'm not sure when the last time that happened to me was, but it sure felt amazing.

The album is gorgeous instrumentally and her vocals again, serve as such an additionally beautiful layer of sound and texture that adds an angelic and at times, even haunting tonality to the record.

Listening to this album feels like floating face up in a lake somewhere staring at the stars in the night sky and thinking about your own past.

I would highly suggest listening to this record with headphones on so you can really soak in everything that's floating around in the ethers of some of these songs and let yourself get engulfed by this record and then eventually, washed away with it as well.

It's a great experience.

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