Freelance Whales: "Hannah"

To sum up my continued surprise at the bafflingly optimistic and rosy-cheeked motion that is folk-pop: I’d like to ever-so-briefly-if-you-don’t-mind dredge up Berger’s response to the similarly remarkable, unabashedly positive movement that was Cubism. (...Hell yes?) As discussed in his essay “The Moment of Cubism,” Berger’s profound amazement was not that Cubism existed so briefly, but rather existed at all in the first place. Similarly, it isn’t so much that folk-pop exists that is amazing; it is that despite economic instability, uncertainty, Wavves, shoegaze, and shitgaze it continues to exist now.

Freelance Whales spring forth with such inimitable pluck. Their sweet-and-sour sincerity has a response to sarcasm, distortion, mega-distortion, irony, nostalgia: vivacious hand-claps, enthused harmonium-squeezing, and uninhibited glee. From out of this verve they have managed to put out a debut album that supersedes its contemporaries in a blinding, bouncy, all-out delight like we haven’t seen since Tilly and the Wall. And then some.

If you’re partial to the night sky, or if you’re vaguely attracted to rooftops, or have been puttering about for a song that does to your brain what a lemon does to your mouth—suss out this pert morsel-of-a-song and tack it onto your playlist, hey? “Hannah,” a tart suffusion of cheeky dream-lyrics, moves along at a spritely pace, not even making any attempts to rely on the diluting or distorting aesthetics of nostalgia as a crutch to help support its whimsy and more precious, earnest moments. Instead infusing animated vocals, chiming elements, and hand claps into a purely contemporary composition with sprinklings of bright banjo rolls, glockenspiels, and smooth bars of synthesizer.

It’s insidiously catchy with more sophistication than it has any right to have. And I’m a fairly bitter, squinty girl, but I kind of like this band, this song. A ringing example of Schopenhauer’s musical aesthetics, “Hannah” embodies not only juicy hooks and a sound that uplifts the spirit from the everyday drudge and clamor, the song also embodies the contagious, spontaneous, balls-to-the-wall-whimsy: the exuberant will of the Freelance Whales themselves to uplift, whether or not you are receptive to this lift for the song, the album, repeated listening, or are even capable of sustaining so much as glimmer of the blithe after this one song. Honestly, how you digest or reconcile yourself to such catchiness and optimism after the song is over, I can’t help you there.