Romanticism

by Hana Vu

Overview

On her full-length debut, 2021's Public Storage, rough-and-real Los Angeles indie wunderkind Hana Vu worked with a co-producer for the first time while continuing to diversify her sound into dark, dancey, and dreamy directions. That producer, Day Wave's Jackson Phillips, returns for the musically like-minded follow-up, Romanticism. Allowing for immersion at 12 songs and a 45-minute run time, it finds Vu entering her twenties and dealing with the personal and broader existentialist struggles of a lovelorn Zoomer with questionable prospects: it's a mood, and Vu nails it. Lines like "There's no song in my heart/Like I thought there was when I was young" and "I'm sorry 'bout the way I am/Please move along" populate the opener, "Look Alive," a symphonic prologue. The next track, "Hammer," seduces with its grooving bittersweetness, melancholy guitar strums, and shuffling beat before the lyrics, instrumentation, and vocal line escalate into something more desperate and anthemic, as Vu calls for help from established structures and doesn't get any. Similarly, catchier, rousing entries like the giddy indie rocker "Alone," swaying midtempo standout "Care," and shimmery, pulsing post-punk track "Play" are alternately about abandonment, playing and losing, and trying to find peace in deciding that "It's okay that no one cares about you/And no one cares about me/'Cause what is care anyway?/I don't know who's to say." Even a disco-y song with a title like "Dreams" carries a punch as it catalogs a fantasy life where it's easy to fall asleep and "doesn't hurt to be alive." Romanticism closes on the rambling, explosive "Love," which arrives at "I guess this is love/I don't know what to say/I don't know how to stop." Setting its heavy heart aside, the album still affects with an emotional roller coaster of musical material, recommended together for a good dance-cry. ~ Marcy Donelson

Product Details

Release Date:	05/03/2024
Label:	Ghostly International
UPC:	0804297843537
Rank:	32633

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Hana Vu   Primary Artist