Our recurring feature series Track by Track sees artists guiding readers through each song on their new release. Today, singer-songwriter Hannah Cohen takes a deep dive into her new album, Earthstar Mountain.
Not many songwriters possess a voice as singular as Hannah Cohen. Her soprano can either render you spellbound or slap you in the face with force and power. The range she boasts is remarkable, with the softest refrains lifting like lullabies and the sharpest choruses bursting into anthems.
But Cohen is more than her inimitable voice, and Earthstar Mountain, her excellent fourth album, demonstrates her songwriting versatility through and through. Crafted with partner and collaborator Sam Evian at their home studio, Flying Cloud Recordings, in New York’s Catskill Mountains, it expands on Cohen’s lush folk backdrop with playful psychedelic flourishes and sticky melodies.
The album itself takes its name from the Earthstar mushroom, a small-but-mighty fungus that grows in the dense woods surrounding Cohen’s home. A regular fungi forager herself, Cohen decided to pair each song on Earthstar Mountain with a companion mushroom for this Track by Track breakdown — all of which are local to her Catskills environment and served as inspiration points for the album.
Beyond mushrooms, though, Cohen found inspiration from other natural sources, plus subjects like her family, her years working as a nanny and caregiver, and grief. Earthstar Mountain also includes a cover of Ennio Morricone’s “Una Spiaggia,” for which she recruited Sufjan Stevens and Clairo as contributors.
Earthstar Mountain is now available to stream below, followed by Hannah Cohen’s Track by Track breakdown (complete with corresponding local mushrooms). You can also pick up a physical copy here.
Cohen also has a handful of US tour dates coming up in support of the album, including gigs opening for Nathaniel Rateliff, Jeff Tweedy, and Mercury Rev. Grab tickets to see her in concert here.
Content shared from consequence.net.