A trained hypnotherapist and Reiki master, there are many different levels to Hannah Bethel’s personality. But above all, she is a master storyteller, transporting you to a singular, detailed moment in her music and with this record she takes things one step further.
Bethel’s voice is reminiscent of Ashley Monroe mixed with early Taylor Swift, she has a sweetness to her tone and I love the falsetto as she reaches for those notes in album opener ‘Bad News Baby’. The lyrics are vivid, you can see the scene and smell the scene in those opening lines ‘I always loved the smell of a cigarette, ever since I was a kid, always wanted to taste it on my lips.’ In the production, she uses the pedal steel/slide guitar to great affect.
‘Godspeed, Los Angeles’ has an energy about it, it’s upbeat and the melodic hooks get stuck in your head. Meanwhile, the stripped back melancholy album closer ‘On The Way Down’ leaves space in the production for the emotion to really pour out of her voice as she trades snippets of a conversation that occurred during a break up. Lyrically she doesn’t hold back or craft it into some poetic rhyme, it is true, honest, real and to the point.
To summarise, I think it’s a brilliant EP from Bethel who is certainly going somewhere with songwriting as good as this!
