Hana Vu - Public Storage (2021) [Hi-Res]

Vu opens the album fixed on a force that recurs throughout. She explains, 'I am not religious but when writing these songs I imagined a sort of desolate character crying out to an ultimately punitive force for something more'. The first sounds we hear are charming: isolated piano keys cycle into warm strums and self-harmonies on 'April Fool,' as Vu's protagonist dismisses her surroundings and ability to communicate. The soft amber glow diffuses into the album's title track, a darker, murkier, louder place. Vu rips through 'Public Storage' with a series of defiant rejections (failure, family, magic) and cathartic demands. It's a rare and powerful display of vulnerability from a lyricist who favors the abstract over autobiographical.