hana stretton's salt and stove
Between the turn of the new year and the end of the season, I took two trips out to the west coast, spending a few days in a cottage that belongs to a friend of a friend. The home's owner had spent their childhood holidays there, before inheriting the place as their own. It's rugged and charming, old stone walls and creaking floorboards. You have to light the stove to get hot water, and the old wooden kitchen table feels like it might always have been there, but there's also wifi and a Smart TV to keep you loosely attached to the modern world.
My first stay, in January, was just a couple of days and I saw almost nothing but deep blue skies and bright sunshine. So much blue it felt almost tropical until I stepped into the ice cold sea and the day faded before 4pm. The second stay was the opposite, three days of endless shifting weather; snow, hail, great gusts of wind and then a sudden break from it all on the last evening, a stretched out pink and gold sunset, one of the best I've ever seen.
I spent much of both trips listening to Hana Stretton's Soon album. It's one I've loved since its release but had spent some time away from over the past year or so. I can't remember what made me think of it the day I arrived there, but it perfectly fit the place, helped conjure the mood I needed. I was there to write and Hana's voice and gentle ambient sounds just drifted into the pockets of my time there like a companion of sorts, just distant enough not to distract, just spellbinding enough to help things grow and take shape. Across the album, Hana's voice wavers and drifts, soft instrumentation comes to the fore and then disappears entirely, before the whole thing finds a way to tie itself together once more.
One afternoon there, I saw the weather finally clear and decided to go for a walk on the beach, which sits just a few minutes away over the dunes. By the time I got to the sand I was getting battered by a hail storm that had swaggered in to lash and sting my face as I laughed into it. When I took my phone out to take a short video of nature's chaos, I saw the song that was playing in my ears right then was one from Soon called 'Changing Weather'.
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Born and raised on a farm in Australia, Hana takes the isolation and sense of inquisitive wonder she found in that upbringing and lets it ripple through her work, conjuring distance and warmth; fascinating fragments of a bigger piece we never get to see. Initially self-released in 2023, Soon went on to grab attention from further afield. Phil Elvrum, of Mt Eerie/The Microphones, loved it so much he re-pressed it on his own label. “I hear an artist who has entered completely into the stream where creation originates," he said at the time. "Hana Stretton has truly recorded the deep flourishing sound of a quiet listening mind in full blossom.”
Those wintry days in the cottage feel like a distant, strange kind of memory now. The days are longer, the trees and shrubs, tides and sand will all be different too. We've just reached the longest day of the year here, and a brutal heatwave is on the horizon. Chapters have closed and new ones have opened, one of which is the reveal of a brand new album from Hana, called tiarn, which has been announced for an August 7th release.
Self-recorded in a small town in Australia, the new album is said to be a influenced by the "ecological grief" she has been witnessing over the past few years. Alongside the album's details, which is formed from eleven songs, Hana has shared two new pieces, 'Salt' and 'Stove'. On the album cover, she stands in grainy half-light on the top of a dune as the day fades out or in.
As abstract and peculiar as Soon showed in flashes, the two new tracks feel familiar and also disparate; small pieces of a whole we can't yet experience.
During the writing and recording of the album, Hana lived in isolation; swimming in the sea during the blue hour, experiencing the world in dusk and twilight. Those grey-blue hues feel woven into these new songs, placing you into an oddly-shaped sense of time and space that never allows you to settle, but entices you in all the same. A world that is peeling away at the edges while we watch it wither, that holds beauty and the opposite of such a thing wherever you look.
Pre-order the new album here, via brierfield flood press
