Introducing: King Hannah, the Liverpool band sign to City Slang & share debut single & video “Crème Brûlée”.
Sometimes a band arrives out of nowhere with a fully formed sound ready to fill a vast concert hall. King Hannah are one of those bands. The Liverpool group led by the creative force of Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle have signed to City Slang, and they share a first single and accompanying video, “Crème Brûlée”
Theirs is a sound both soothing in its moods and intoxicating in its rushing soundscapes. Their neon guitar lines and intimate torchlight vocals put the everyday on a pedestal, lifted by melodic licks that swell into dense and swirling atmospheric textures.
Debut single "Crème Brûlée" is a moody fugged-out ballad for the everyday. They share it with an accompanying video, commenting:
“We couldn’t be more excited to share with you our first ever music video, for our debut single,
Crème Brûlée!!! We shot and edited it ourselves across Liverpool and North Wales (spot the Welsh flag!) with the aim to create a homemade, documentary-style piece inspired by the indie films
we love. We really hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!”
Craig formed King Hannah before Hannah knew anything about it. He had seen her performing years before, but they didn't meet until she was assigned to show him the ropes at the bar job they'd both taken on to get by while still making music.
He immediately pestered her to play some music with him, and they started a routine, spending the hours before work at Craig's house, where for a long time Hannah could not pluck up the courage to play him her own music.
"That went on for a year,"
said Hannah, while Craig just waited patiently for her to play. When they finally got to writing their own songs together, everything clicked into place.
"It's just about finding the right people. When I go to Craig with some chords and lyrics, he just gets it," says Hannah. "If we hadn't found each other, I don't know where we would be,"
says Craig.
The density of their sound comes from the combination of their guitar and vocals with support from Ted White, Jake Lipiec and Olly Gorman. Inspired by the vocals of Mazzy Star and guitars of Kurt Vile, Hannah writes lyrics first thing in the morning and lets her mind spill onto the page, and they contain all the raw vulnerability and mundane reflections of that mental space. This vulnerability is something Hannah feels acutely on stage, but is also what makes their music so magnetic.
"There's nothing pretend about us,"
she says – the grit in their sound and her voice speaks volumes.
"We don't want to sound clean or polished,"
says Craig,
"we want to sound real, and dynamic and authentic."
King Hannah - “Crème Brûlée” (single)