REVIEW. HANNAH FURY --- THROUGH THE GASH

Hannah Fury makes impossibly beautiful music.  She wrote and performed all the songs on this album (this is her 2nd full length album since her debut in 2000 although she has also released several EPs on her own record label, Mellow Traumatic).  She uses mainly keyboards and drum machine to create songs that seem fragile and ethereal but have a darker undertone.  She's compared to Julee Cruise and like her, I could see these songs as the soundtrack to some macabre David Lynch masterpiece.  On some of the songs like Girls That Glitter Love The Dark the music uses more of a trip hop influence to produce a definite sense of unease.  On other songs like Don't Look Back, she weaves a fragile confection that somehow manages to highlight her emotional lyrics even more.  Her way with words is beguiling and mysterious and her voice is enchanting and seductive.  She layers her vocals to create a rich texture to her songs whose multi-layered sound make it hard to believe just one person could create such accomplished songs.

She is living proof that less is more, that gothic doesn't have to mean screaming over thumping beats, it can be the simple but tragic sound of a heart breaking.  Some of her earlier songs were based on Wicked (itself based on The Wizard of Oz) and she often uses baroque and carnival imagery in her work (she has an online boutique called Antoinette's Revenge where she sells handmade jewellery among other things) but she is one of those artists who can do this without ever making her songs feel like novelty items.  She makes you believe totally and utterly in the strange world she has created.  Delicately beautiful songs with a deliciously darker undertone like the melodies from a haunted music box, Hannah Fury is an extraordinary artist.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MAY 2008.