More about: Hannah Jadagu

Hannah Jadagu is a ready-and-waiting indie-pop star. Listening to her debut studio-length record Aperture, it’s clear the Texan native is a student of indie-pop; the album at times feels like a fond trip through the recent music past.

Plenty of songs on the album shimmer with the emotive power of established favourites like Snail Mail or Vagabon, and Jadagu regularly utilises an accessible songwriting talent that has made artists like Phoebe Bridgers resonate well with fans of moonlit rock balladry.

"...while Jadagu is clearly a devotee of indie pop, this isn’t the limit of her musical palette"

Although, while Jadagu is clearly a devotee of indie pop, this isn’t the limit of her musical palette: she’s noted she was also raised by her mother on artists like Young Money and Black Eyed Peas. The different musical tastes which have woven through Jadagu’s upbringing similarly mesh into Aperture’s overarching indie sound. “The blanket of synths I use throughout helps me move between sensibilities,” Jadagu has said of the album, “there’s rock Hannah, there’s hip-hop Hannah, and so on.” 

Though all these influences sound promising, you may expect Aperture to drag under the weight of its musical references. Yet, even with all these flashes of recognisable contemporaries, the record still manages to stand alone as a convincing article of Jadagu’s artistic perspective thanks to her emphatic songwriting and thoughtful instrumentation.

In fact, it’s the care with which Jadagu balances her different musical tastes and melds this with her own unique perspective that makes Aperture a worthwhile listen. For instance, the soulful ‘Warning Sign’, one of the album’s highlights, illustrates the back-and-forth of a turbulent relationship by mixing airy, delicate jazziness with warping textures and grainy guitars. Elsewhere, ‘Say It Now’ is a classic indie-rock tune, contemplative on past relationships and words left unsaid, buoyed by sprawling electronic synths lifting Jadagu’s vocals on the chorus. Both these tracks are finely crafted, an exhibition of Jadagu’s ability to compose a neat, tightly formed indie-pop hit.

The best track of all on Aperture, though, is one of Jadagu’s more explorative compositions: ‘Letter to Myself’ mutes the familiar pop structures that characterise much of the album and instead, the song centres Jadagu’s vocals, which levitate over pulsating, spacey synths. The lyrics of the song are anxious and fraught, interrogating different worries for a 20-year-old on the brink of post-university adulthood (like Jadagu): existentialism, death, the end of relationships. Jadagu doesn’t reach for an answer for any of these anxieties; the track is rather just a burst of genuine emotion. It’s much more convincing that way, though, and ‘Letter to Myself’ ends up a moving and interesting cut, and a promising indicator of Jadagu’s capabilities.

On the cover of Aperture, Jadagu stands alone in the middle of a room lit in warm orange and brown hues. The room seems small and busy: there’s not a glimpse of bare, tidy floor, and clothes are hung on the walls like space has run out for them in the closet. The image mirrors well the general tone of the album: it’s compact and tightly put together, but still down-to-earth, genuine, and homey. Altogether, the album is a well-formed indie-pop record. There’s room for Jadagu to expand on the ideas and sounds here, but it’s certainly captivating and impressive as a debut project. Aperture uses varied musical resources and intelligent storytelling to create authentic vignettes of young life: it’s worth taking a moment to see what Hannah Jadagu has captured here.

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More about: Hannah Jadagu