The feedback that opens and closes Gutter, the anxious heartbeat thrumming beneath the synths of Anything Striking (or the spare piano building up tension midway through)-these are the moments that make the record, underscoring the interplay between hard and soft, fuzzy dream pop and heavy grunge. The best tracks don’t stand out because they’re poetic or insightful, but because of how strongly they invoke that discomfiting contradiction of youth. And though others may find it harder to engage for the same reason, there’s an odd advantage that the emotional distance gives to the album’s atmosphere: her detachment props up the disaffection.įar from the full-on emotional reckoning of Fiona Apple or the raw vulnerability of Lucy Dacus or Mitski, Hana Vu plays with the space between words and verses to pull the listener into her state of mind. Vu doesn’t really let us in, but how many 21 year olds do? For some, that’s exactly what makes the music accessible, easier for their own experiences to slot into. In fact, there is a clear lack of intimacy and vulnerability that would go hand in hand with true emotional depth. Public Storage isn’t particularly personal, at least not lyrically. Steeped in alt-rock and new wave influences and "you can't prove this is about you" vagaries, Vu's full length debut is just the right balance of melodrama, defiance, and inhibition-all the hallmarks of adolescent angst. The constant tug of war between unearned pride and undeserved embarrassment, carefully contained under an easily penetrable veil of nonchalance-that’s the shaky ground that Hana Vu briefly stills on Public Storage. ![]() ![]() Can you still remember the taste of copper on your tongue when you saw your first ex with somebody new? Or the pinch in your stomach when you moved away from home, caught your parents’ faces in the rearview mirror? The text that took three hours to write, days to languish in your drafts, a second to send, and weeks to regret? That was the time of life when every emotion was magnified to its highest intensity, every action scrutinized until it was threadbare. There’s nothing like the torment of young adult self-consciousness.
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