Child Bride

Hannah Cohen comes from a family of poets and musicians, broadcasters and booksellers. Her grandfather, Bertie Rodgers, was a much-lauded poet, BBC broadcaster and good friend of Dylan Thomas. Hannah's mother was a 17 year old British schoolgirl on holiday in San Francisco when she met Hannah's father, a jazz drummer from the Midwest, and there Hannah was raised surrounded by music, musicians, and hippie intellectuals. She left home as a teenager to travel the world working as a model, soon finding herself in New York and becoming over the next few years something of a muse to the city's art scene, posing for Richard Prince, Terry Richardson, David Salle, Will Cotton, and Ryan McGinley. Working on the other side of the lens, Hannah shot album covers and music videos for friends, and her first book of photography, "Fotografias Brasil", was published this year. Hannah's debut record, "Child Bride", was produced by Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, known for his keyboard work with artists like The National, Martha Wainwright, and Antony and the Johnsons, and also producer of upcoming records by Glen Hansard and Julia Stone. Together they have created an expansive, haunted album, lush and welcoming, but also at times almost painfully intimate. Hannah's strikingly distinctive voice and casually assured phrasing are at the centre of it all, from the heartbroken outpouring of "The Crying Game" to the dark insomnia pop of "Boy + Angel" (a Doveman cover, and the record's only non-original), to "California", an irresistibly catchy love letter to Hannah's home state, with a sunny disposition that can't quite hide the undercurrent of melancholy and homesickness.