Softly strummed chords steadily resound beneath layers of swelling vocals, grief-stricken and tenderly sincere. In her song “Husk,” Hannah Frances explores the glacial vulnerability of death, expounding grief as an absent presence and a manifestation of immortalized love. For sorrow cannot exist without the chances taken by love, and death forever plagues the corporeal body. The resulting imagery is passionately intimate: Dirt wedged between pulsating hands that claw at the mud, aching for some semblance of return, releasing the cages of despair that impede life in a time of loss. “Husk” is emotionally harrowing and breathtakingly articulate, spilling soulful introspections on life’s ubiquitous misgivings. Frances laments in the final lyrical blow, “Death is a husk / Holding the shape of my life.”
Frances’ record, Keeper of the Shepherd released in March of this year, melds the traditions of folk and avant-garde jazz to construct her distinctive sound. In this musical space, Frances grapples with the grief of losing her father and the emotional aftermath of vacuous relationships. Her lyrics are pure poetry and her guitar work is profoundly inventive. What results is a passionately authentic work, carried by its elegiac fortitude into untouched worlds perfectly encapsulated by its writing.
“When I started approaching Keeper of the Shepherd, I had grown so much as a musician,” Frances said in an interview with The Tribune. “The whole album is challenging, […] but I wanted to reach my edges as a musician on this record. Emotionally, I was going through a lot of intense reckoning and releasing a lot.”
Throughout the record, the land is pushed to the soundscape’s foreground, while the perishable body becomes minute in the narrative of enduring nature. Frances now resides in Vermont, amongst the state’s breathtaking landscapes of ceaseless forests, lively wildlife, and harsh changes of the seasons. On “Woolgathering,” Frances sings, “Give me time to free my lungs / The ribs are loosening / The life breathes in.” She immerses herself in the life of a wandering shepherd to access the shearing of her bodily grief, communing with the surrounding mortality of nature for acceptance of this past.
In discussing some of her literary influences, Frances said, “I think [Mary Oliver] subconsciously always inspires me to turn to the land for imagery and also to remember something bigger than the myopic stories that we all live in.”
Sometimes music unintentionally appears at the right time in a person’s life. This album arrived at an odd period for me. The March ice was waging wars as cold as ever, soon melting into the mud that bloomed the leaves of tomorrow’s summer. But Keeper of the Shepherd is a medicine for sorrow, engulfing you in its warm presence, comforting and easing with every note. The work accepts the loss that courses through every aspect of life, and the fleeting nature of love that drifts from season to season.
“Once it’s out of my hands, I think records find people when they’re meant to,” Frances stated. “It’s my hope that it makes people feel strong. I hope it makes people feel in touch with something very real and feel triumphant.”
The implementation of alternate tunings and irregular time signatures throughout the tracks fashion a soundscape of auditory uncertainty as a mirror to grief’s unpredictability. The record’s first song, “Bronwyn,” explores every inch of this theoretical space by continuously altering its signature to expound emotive wanderings. The accompanying arrangements crescendo as Frances expels, “For no one is mine to hold and no one holds still.” Her powerful voice hums every note like it’s her last, loosening ribs for breath and song to course through. There are no albums like //Keeper of the Shepherd//; its tender intensity and vulnerable beauty cement Hannah Frances as a true folk poet.
