Hannah Sanders
Album: Warning Bells
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 5
Website: http://www.hannahsandersfolk.com

Earlier this year, Hannah, in partnership with Liz Simmons, released a fine EP World Begun which demonstrated both their intuitive joint response to traditional song and their own individual songwriting talents. Warning Bells sets out Hannah's own solo stall, employing a broadly similar mix of material (three traditionals, one cover and one self-penned song). The songs, which detail the perils of love and life (emigration, pregnancy, family, betrayal and poverty, though not necessarily in that order!), are brought to life by Hannah in immediate and thoughtfully considered readings backed only by her own skilled guitar or baritone dulcimer playing. The EP's centrepiece, whether intentionally or otherwise, is an intriguing, close-on-seven-minute reading of the epic Cruel Mother ballad whose impact is as much down to Hannah's penchant for melodic improvisation as to her interpretation of the text itself. I hear in her technique a certain influence from Joni Mitchell, giving an at times almost jazzy freedom to her delivery but one which perhaps, and curiously, may seem more consciously controlled. All in all though, Hannah's deliberate yet natural avoidance of predictable metricality is heard to pay considerable interpretive dividends.

The EP's standout track in terms of overall impact, however, has to be Hannah's own striking composition Beware Of The Kids, a powerful and bleak reflection on children who've lost their way, which will, Hannah hopes, be part of a bigger project of songs old and new about wayward kids and problem parents. This haunting, gloom-inflected opus could almost've come straight off a Richard Thompson album… against which observation, finding Hannah covering RT's Strange Affair comes as no surprise here. And yet Hannah's keenly felt rendition (which sports a guitar backing that I thought betrayed a certain Martin Simpson influence), can't eclipse Beware Of The Kids in terms of emotional impact.

The EP opens with a brace of trad-arrs, both quite rhythm-centred in their method. Canadee-I-O coasts along nicely on a breezy though leisurely slapped-rhythm guitar part that owes as much to Joni as to Nic Jones, with the influence of Joni also to the fore in the vocal treatment. At first, I thought Lucy Wan might be judged less successful in that the storytelling feels rushed along, sublimated by the driven pace almost, but after listening to the track in isolation this approach seems to make better sense somehow.

The attractively pared-down music on this EP enables us to gain an honest and authentic portrait of Hannah's individual musical personality: one which I predict will open the doors for her on the at-times-fickle folk circuit.

David Kidman

PS Hannah, along with Liz Simmons are currently on the current Fatea Showcase Session Summer 13:Outlines available at no charge from http://fatea-showcase-sessions.co.uk/