Hannah Frances – Nested in Tangles
A nest of tangles is an apt way to describe the rich and complex music that Hannah Frances makes. There are endless details to get lost in, innumerable layers and threads to pull and follow; to call her elaborately arranged folk “progressive” still somehow undersells its depth. New elements rise to the surface with each listen, but there’s nothing coldly technical about its construction. In the opening title track of Nested in Tangles, each instrument is a necessary part of a greater organism that breathes and pulses with life as she parallels a contradictory and trauma-informed personal history with the knotted roots and branches of a tree, accepting and taking comfort in those complications: “I am fragmentary and whole at once/I am tender heart and jagged hand/I am a bird, and a stone, and a fragile bone.” It’s a lot to process, but the effect is less a labyrinth than a colorful and verdant path—not a web, but a nest.
Having cultivated an increasingly more ambitious songwriting style beginning with a series of more sparsely arranged EPs recorded in her early twenties, the Chicago singer/songwriter arrived at a new peak of sophistication and songwriting with 2024’s Keeper of the Shepherd. She also didn’t let any time go to waste once it was released; building off that record’s mesmerizing journey of personal healing and coming to terms with her traumatic youth through gorgeous chamber folk, Frances began the process of writing its follow-up Nested In Tangles nearly immediately thereafter, working with longtime collaborator Kevin Copeland, along with a contribution from Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen on “The Space Between,” to further grow and nourish its lush splendor.
Frances draws even more heavily from prog and avant-garde jazz on Nested in Tangles, taking a maximalist approach that, more than ever, draws greater focus to the complexity of sounds. The inclusion of two instrumental tracks bears this out, each fleshing out complementary aspects that are essential parts of Frances’ sound—”Beholden To” coming to life slowly and gently like the musical equivalent of watching a sunrise, while a drone that mimics the wheeze of a bypassing train guides “A Body, A Map” into more rhythmically taut exercise in hypnotic riffs and odd time signatures. When every element comes together on “Life’s Work,” the effect is bright and joyful—all uptempo drum patter, elegantly buzzing open-tuned string plucks and more wonderful layers of horns—even if its underlying message is one of Sisyphean effort: “Learning to trust in spite of it is life’s work.”
The contrast between heavy emotional work and effortlessly elaborate songwriting is central to Nested in Tangles, each finding a kind of softness in what on paper might seem anything but. In a relaxed and earthy verse laden with pedal steel in the standout “Falling From and Further,” Frances’ voice rises to a gorgeous quiver as she confesses that “The fear of everyone leaving/keeps me leaving first.” But its warmly gentle approach intermittently dissipates for the sake of kicking up into an urgent rush, only to ease back again into its sun-dappled glen, showcasing an eruptions of horns like a living breathing organism within its lush landscape. Frances winds her way through a thick maze of sound in “Steady in the Hand,” its slowly fleshed out arrangement of guitar, pedal steel and woodwinds leading the way toward a softly sung moment of emotional wisdom, “It takes loving and losing to know what matters.” But she swaps a gentler approach for heavier sounds amid a stormy reckoning of abusive familial relationships on “Surviving You,” juxtaposing its musical turbulence against some of the album’s hardest truths: “There is nothing more to give toward forgiveness/When there is no willingness to understand.”
The album’s closing track, “Heavy Light,” takes a winding path to get to Frances’ spoken word close, indulging in an extended guitar solo—which, for how fertile its sonic palette is, is a rare occurrence nonetheless. It feels more like an encore for the fun of it, an earned moment of indulgence after working through grief and pain and examining what it takes to feel whole again. Like everything here, it’s unbelievably gorgeous, but just a little lighter, a deep exhale punctuated with an affirmation of peace and acceptance: “To live here, in the heavy/In the light/I am the heart I’ve needed/And I feel it all.” Intertwining cathartic release with a richly rewarding array of sounds, Nested in Tangles is a work of personal and musical growth that just might likewise provide the heart you’ve needed too.
Label: Fire Talk
Year: 2025
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Hannah Frances : Nested in Tangles
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