Hannah vs. The Many

Hannah Fairchild sings about the “pretty little tragedies” that occur when you’re young, broke, and living in New York with her band Hannah vs. The Many. Her songs play out like tiny musicals - they’re dramatic, punchy, and lightly dusted with Stephen Sondheim’s lyricality -- he’s the one who wrote the music and lyrics to Sweeney Todd. See if you can hear a likeness to his dark theatre in her music. - Soundcheck WNYC

The key's in the name. Hannah VS. The Many. Not Hannah AND The Many... You wouldn't want to be part of the "Many" Hannah Fairchild's ferociously taking down - track by track. You know that old cliche 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger'? The various obstacles that stood in Hannah's way, be they deceitful hipsters or any other failures, sure had their part to play in building up this fierce red-headed woman who ignited Mercury Lounge's stage last Sunday (9.2). Boy has she got fire in her. At its fastest, the sound of Hannah vs. The Many is some vindictive high-energy punk-folk with celtic undertones. As it simmers down and she sits alone at the keyboard, the room goes silent, and you can feel dramatic tension filling the air. With so far one album to their name (which doesn't make justice to their live show), an EP set to be released in December and a follow up LP which for now is a work in progress, we should soon be hearing more from this band - stay tuned. - Tracy Mamoun - The Deli Magazine NYC

It’s never safe to say that one artist is the best in a particular genre: every time you think you’ve heard everything, a songwriter like Nehedar comes out of the woodwork and blows you away. But it’s safe to say that there is no better lyricist, tunesmith or singer in rock right now than Hannah Fairchild of Hannah vs. the Many. Her previous album All Our Heroes Drank Here was rated #13 on the best of 2012 list here and probably should have been #1. With its torrents of lyrics, savage humor, menacing noir cabaret cascades, scorching guitar riffage and relentless angst – not to mention Fairchild’s searing, wounded wail – it illustrates a bitter, doomed urban milieu as memorable as anything Leonard Cohen or Jarvis Cocker ever wrote. Hannah vs. the Many have a new ep aptly titled Ghost Stories just out and an album release show coming up on Nov 14 at Cake Shop. They’re ferociously good live, and Fairchild is as charismatic a frontwoman as you would expect after hearing her studio material.

The new ep reinvents several of the tracks from Fairchild’s 2010 solo album Paper Kingdoms. It’s amazing how different they are, yet how much the original, mostly acoustic versions sound like demos for these volcanic full-band performances.

All Eyes on Me builds from layers of resonant guitar from Fairchild and her brilliant lead player, Josh Fox, as the organ and keys rise to a slashing insistent Strat-fueled chorus. The narrative could be about a triumphant flight above the “the sorry strangers under glass, no time to think about their lives, identical in horror” – or it could be the desperate tale of a double suicide told from the point of view of someone with no fear of the reaper.

Lady of the Court is Fairchild at the top of her dramatic power, a bitter cautionary tale from the perspective of someone who’s just willing enough to work her way up…but to what? From its faux-bombastic twin guitar intro, it hits a roaring anthemic groove, Fairchild’s voice low and menacing as she traces another angst-fueled trajectory:

Unlikely princess in the eyes of the day-old drunks
I’ve never been the girl whose name is in the title
The story is ending and the world just blurs away
Turning pages and waiting on the hero
I am a guardian of thieves
Flying on unbuttoned sleeves
Falling in the backstreets but not for too long

It hits a wry 80s keyboard interlude on the way to a surprise ending.

Nicollet captures a bitter breakup over creepy piano-based art-rock. The original version has a folkie acoustic feel, albeit with a distant menace; what’s stunning about this version is how much more power, yet more nuance there is in Fairchild’s voice:

Crossing yourself at my door
You’ve come seeking some quick and easy absoloution
But I’m only as clean as the floors I’ve been kneeling on

The most explosive and arguably best song here is Poor Leander, a corrosively poignant account of two probably irreparably damaged souls hell-bent on NOT making things work, set to marauding noir cabaret rock:

Bedsheet around your shoulder, scrapes on both your knees
Were you running off the rooof again, my broken friend?
Now you’re flying out to save her from the latest ivory castle that you found
But the second she lets you in her window it’ll all come crashing down

The closest thing to the original here is the luridly torchy, aptly titled Slow Burn, which wouldn’t be out of place in the Julia Haltigan catalog. As with the rest of the album, guitars gleam and smolder, electric piano tingles and Fairchild’s voice rises from an anxious murmur to a vengeful scream and then back again. Forget about Grace Potter and all those wannabes: Hannah vs. the Many are the real deal, the teens equivalent of what Siouxsie & the Banshees were in the 80s or the Avengers ten years before. - New York Music Daily

Who says female singer-songwriters who play the guitar are boring?
Unfortunately the large and unequivocally stupid masses, but as usual the
monster’s here to put the record straight – with a little help from a Brooklyn
musician aptly named Hannah vs. The Many.
Last week Hannah released her second albumAll Our Heroes Drank Here,
which proudly boasts recording time at the notorious Royal Drag Studios and
includes such listening delights as “Hideous/Adorable” and “A Biography of Cells”.
DIY credit aside, on first listen Hannah Fairchild’s music is paint-by-numbers – not aided by
technically competent vocals – but given time the songs transform into charming and often poignant
ditties to being pissed off and drunk. Think the American, oestrogen fuelled equivalent of Frank
Turner or the fiery cousin of Dresden Dolls. - Drunken Werewolf

If you’re looking for a hell-bent, theatrical indie rocker then look no further.

Brooklyn‘s own Hannah vs. The Many sings of life’s “pretty little tragedies” with a fury behind those female vocals. Putting power into the genre power-pop, Hannah & Co. are sure to be an explosive act on stage. The track below, “Muse,” contains winding electric guitars, pounding keys, and heavy hitting percussion while Hannah angrily tells the tale of past and regretful lovers. - What's Protocol

If you like the idea of Amanda Palmer but the nerdgirl shtick makes you want to barf, Hannah vs. the Many is the band for you. Their new album All Our Heroes Drank Here is streaming at their Bandcamp site, where it’s onsale for a sarcastic-as-hell $1. Hannah Fairchild’s acidic, unaffectedly malevolent, frequently menacing songs chronicle a bleak early 21st century depression-era New York drenched in disappointment and despair. She sings with a powerful wail, has a laserlike feel for a catchy tune and a worldview that’s something less than optimistic, no surprise given the uneasy, desperate milieu her characters inhabit. Her women drink hard and crash hard when their diminishing sense of hope finally deserts them – imagine a female Jarvis Cocker, or Aimee Mann in a really bad mood, with a harder-rocking band.

Over the roar and the chime of the guitars, Fairchild slings torrents of lyrics:

Looking for your echoes in the melodies I’ve found
There are songs I sing on days you’re not around
Every time the notes are pretty, every time the notes fail me
No kiss is ever more than sugar sweet
No affection is ever more than river deep

she wails, in Muse, the album’s loudest song, a hellbent, galloping rocker. Interestingly, her most opaque lyric is set to the album’s most striking, unpredictably memorable tune, the new wave-tinged Better Off My Way. Yet that one ends cruelly as well, her shellshocked protagonist standing in in the harbor up to her ankles, freezing and fooling nobody. The most unselfconsciously beautiful song on the album, and maybe its strongest track, is Jordan Baker. Lushly watery Rickenbacker guitar chiming and mingling with the piano, Fairchild casually yet meticulously paints a picture that was doomed from the start – and it ends ambiguously with what might be a suicide…or maybe just the apocalypse.

Other songs are driven more by frustration and rage than by total emotional depletion. The bouncy, dramatic opening track, A Biography of Cells caustically chronicles a would-be up-and-coming New Yorker’s frustrations in an all-too-familiar milieu that later reaches fever pitch in the corrosive noir cabaret song The Party Faithful. Proof of Movement, a frustration anthem, contrasts a claustrophobic lyric with a bustling, insistent piano-driven art-rock melody, while 20 Paces quietly and apprehensively explores a budding, doomed, drunken relationship. True Believers is a lushly orchestrated art-rock anthem that takes an offhand swipe at a crowd who “came to be seen and we stay for the show, coming together to stand here alone.” The rest of the album includes an apprehensively glimmering chamber-rock ballad simply titled Nocturne, and the lickety-split noir cabaret scenario Hideous/Adorable. There’s a lot to like here – fans of noir rock, steampunk and gypsy rock as well as classic lyrical songwriters from Elvis Costello to Randi Russo should check out this band: solid, purist playing from Matthew Healy on piano, Jake W-M on bass, Erica Harsch on drums, Josh Fox on guitar and Meredith Leich on violin. It’s an early contender for best rock record of 2012. - New York Music Daily

Her voice can throb, bob and roll. Hannah Fairchild is a Fargo/Moorhead native who’s doing a show at the Red Raven. She majored in musical theater in college and moved to New York in 2005, planning to ignite a Broadway stage career. But she grew tired of the theater scene with bossy directors who thrash on actors for kicks. She needed more freedom and decided that she wanted to sing without the acting, so she bought a guitar and has been playing ever since, while letting loose her own unique style of vocals. These days, she does shows throughout New York and is immersed in Brooklyn’s indie music community.

She’s a cool do-it-her-way vocalist/guitar player who recently released her first album, “Paper Kingdoms.” Despite loud neighbors, ice cream trucks, and muscle cars revving on the mean streets, she managed to record the album in her Brooklyn apartment, almost entirely by herself. The tracks truly were an enterprise in do-it-yourself-at-home artistry. She taught herself how to use recording equipment. She scrimped and saved and borrowed equipment from friends to make it all happen.

While securing a hard-drive to back up her music because her Mac was giving up the ghost, she broke her ankle. But she turned the liability and pain into her own gain. No, she didn’t sue Best Buy. She had to take time off from her day job waiting tables and was able to put more time and energy into recording. Hannah is a one-woman show who can belt it out with impressive range and depth.

Her lyrics are full of her own complex poetry, often touching on doomed relationships and tough and feisty women who might just be a little “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Hannah Fairchild feels that “making the album was cathartic” because she had recently ended a less-than-ideal relationship, and she needed to “find an outlet for expressing a strong independent female voice.”

In her songs “Pin Up” and “Poor Leander,” we see needy, clingy women and the men who get off on female dependence. Hannah recognizes that many women casually give in to pressures around them, conforming to sex-toy stereotypes to seem appealing. Hannah knows that these women often underestimate themselves, ignoring their own internal calls and inclinations. In the album, the female characters progress toward becoming women who pick themselves up and are assertive and confident. The song “Slow Burn” portrays a seductive, dark, and strong woman who takes a golden boy on a rough ride.

Hannah blends blues, jazz, and folk styles, producing haunting and moving rhythms and tones. Currently, she is planning her next album, which will be out early next year. One song on the album will be “Jordan Baker,” based on the independent, athletic woman in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Hannah has a thing for the 20’s jazz scene, and it comes out in her, at times, smoldering and lilting vocals. Her next album will be recorded in a studio and will include more musicians.

She recently gained some acclaim for her guest vocals on Dinosaur Feathers’ album Fantasy Memorial. She plans on continuing more collaborative projects in the near future. It seems a Hannah Fairchild band may be next.

Her music has a feminist message: don’t take crap from bossy men. Sometimes, she has to fend off smarmy male customers while she tends bar and waits tables in a snooty New York restaurant. But she does it all with a bit of Minnesota nice. While getting in trouble and building her street rep as a club and barroom songstress, she is famous for her big laugh that matches her big voice. If she doesn’t have much money yet, she’s got some major assets in soul.

-Roland Finger - High Plains Reader

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Featured Artists
LC Feature – March 2010: Hannah Fairchild
By jessirobertson · March 1, 2010 · Post a comment
Filed Under Debbie Miller, Dinosaur Feathers, Duck, Hannah Fairchild, Ten Antenna

Poor Leander
– Listen to a new song from Hannah’s new album, Paper Kingdoms.

Local Correspondents congratulates Hannah Fairchild on the release of her debut album “Paper Kingdoms.” Those of you who have not yet seen Hannah perform should get yourselves to Bar4 on March 31st for her CD release party, which includes an amazing All Girl Line Up. We’ve been privileged to have Hannah as part of our community. She has a powerful voice and a commanding presence on stage that most of us can only envy. Her lyrics are nuanced, and only benefit from additional listens. We are very excited to hear her ambitious DIY project this March.

-Jessi Robertson - www.localcorrespondents.com