Hanna Fearns x MicroPopDay Düsseldorf

In the organizer's words:

"Are you alright?" This simple, loving and yet concerned question is at the heart of the third album by Cologne-based artist Hanna Fearns. And it is programmatic: where many pop albums revolve around the self in diary-like navel-gazing, Hanna Fearns consistently looks outwards - at people, at vulnerability, at the world. Are You Alright? is a record about perceiving others, about comfort, affection and trying to empathize with other people's realities. Hanna Fearns is one of the most unlikely career stories in the German-speaking indie underground. After years in crude pop, new wave, punk and country bands on Lake Constance, her debut album Sentimental Bones (2014) was released shortly before her 50th birthday - and immediately revealed an outstanding storyteller with a voice like a Texan bar singer from a David Lynch film. With Turn on the Light (2018), produced by Notwist producer Olaf Opal and accompanied by indie first-timers such as Kinderzimmer Productions' Textor, Peter Rubel (International Music) and Björn Sonnenberg (Locas In Love), she unleashed a graceful collection of laid-back songs full of lightness and depth - enthusiastically received, successfully toured. The pandemic brought these activities to an abrupt halt. Fearns used the time for a radical artistic reorientation: in her EP If/When she played almost every note herself, picked up instruments she had never played before and formed her own sound - a lovechild of Brian Eno and the Cowboy Junkies.Are You Alright? continues along this path. Surrounded by a top-class line-up of Cologne underground colleagues - including Björn Sonnenberg, Nicklas Schneider and Stefanie Schrank - Fearns interweaves great melodies, pop sensibility and country swagger with drones, feedback and sound manipulation. An important role is played by the new, powerful and open sound of the baritone guitar, which fits in perfectly with Hanna Fearns' dark, soft voice. The first single "Sugar" sets the tone: a song about addiction, toxic relationships - and above all about comfort. The dabbed piano is juxtaposed with background choirs that sound like ghosts that have been hanging out in the studio since the 60s; a mysterious, dark reverb guitar counters the sweetness of the chorus. When Fearns' softly reverberated vocals kick in, it's like listening to a radio broadcast from New York's Brill Building - the ghostly echo of a long-forgotten girl group. In less than three minutes, "Sugar" provides warmth, support and an empowering tenderness that feels like an embrace.

The second single "It's Just Ink" takes the album's title question at its word and turns it inwards. Hanna describes what many people know after the years of the pandemic: rampant insecurities, paralyzing depression, thoughts that go round in circles at night - "It's like ink pouring into water." But from this night-black verse, the song rises from chorus to chorus, spreads its wings and proves to be a rousing pop anthem in the spirit of The Breeders and Throwing Muses. The word "just" does its quiet, powerful work: "It's just ink." The song "Travelling" also exemplifies the core idea of the album: Fearns describes how she tries to help a person in a difficult life situation - with an open mind, without judging. This attitude runs through all the songs, sometimes in a tragic, sometimes in a loving, sometimes in a surprisingly funny way, for example in the anti-office manifesto "Leave", where one world-embracing power moment follows the next over a perfect 35 minutes. Concern for the world and love of the world spring from the same source - and Hanna Fearns tries to offer artistic answers or at least sincere consolation in the format of the pop song. In the Fearns universe, 59 seems to be the new 25: we are experiencing an exceptional artist at the -next provisional - peak of her creative career and it sounds so indescribably beautiful.