Interview #2: the Lore of Hana Stretton, Part 1

a conversation about her album, 'Soon'

After frantically sprinting along the sea-front, I manage to face-time Hana just in the nick of time. Along the stormy south coast of England, it’s 12am. She’s watching cartoons in bed. For a minute, I think to myself, oh no, cartoons at noon? Is Hana sick?

Then I realise for Hana, it’s 9pm.

I’m staying at a friend’s seaside flat near Bournemouth, U.K, while she’s just left Melbourne, Australia for nature once more, and is weaning herself off anti-depressants. She tells me about ‘body zaps’, the feeling of your body suddenly electrified, just for a second, but it’ll keep happening - ten in a row. Then, she points at a fly buzzing around the room. Hana has always been acutely aware of the particular. She is always tethered to the moment.

We both tell each other we’re next to a beach. “Of course we are!”

Hana is a very special person. Everyone who’s ever met her says so. She’s one of those people that strike you like lightning, even before you’ve listened to her music. And then you listen, and it’s like breathing in the smell of the ground after rain.

“The best time of my life was being in a van”, she tells me as I hit record. “Just me, my guitar and my van for two weeks.”

C: Is that when you recorded your album?

H: No, but that was when I wrote one of the songs.

C: Which one?

H: Changing Weather.

C: I’ve been reading this newsletter, Human Stuff, and your song came up! I thought, “THAT’S MY FRIEND”.

H: I miss you, I can’t wait to come over. I haven’t even seen your Crypt or anything!

C: I want you to record in it!

H: How has it been? have you been recording other people?

C: Jack’s been recording loads of people. I’ve been recording a few. We recorded Ailsa and her band a few weeks back! [Myself, Hana and Ailsa did a collab EP released last year, Hiding Place]. Jack’s started working with a guy called Pete, who used to be in a band quite similar to Another Sky, and he’s really cool. I did a songwriting session with him, too. I really want the Crypt to become this hub where everyone comes along and is in each other’s band, and everyone’s music gets made. That’s kind of my dream. To finally have a scene.

H: Are you getting paid?

C: I am! I am, actually. Need more work to make it economically viable, but I’m getting paid. We just did a film score for Lilly Zhuang, a film-maker. A beautiful, beautiful film. It’s being sent out to festivals. I also work with a guy called Sean Lionadh, this amazing film-maker, poet and musician.

H: I think the best part of production is helping people, and getting inside their head. And connecting with what they want. Your hands become an extension of their brain. I love that idea. I think I would probably get too over-excited being a producer -

C: You produced one of Lou Moon’s tracks that’s coming out soon, right?

H: That was me and Laura late at night, not even thinking about it.

C: I love that one. Music is best when it’s friends late at night, that’s what music should be.

I met Hana in London, ten years ago now. I heard of her before I saw her. It was through whispers in the grapevine - there was this palpable excitement buzzing around her, as if she was the Loch Ness monster, some kind of lore passed by word of mouth. When I finally saw her perform, it still felt like she wasn’t real, static whirring on the projector behind her as if she stood in a TV screen. I remember closing my eyes to listen. Everyone did, swimming in the darkness of chorus guitars and effortless, soulful mantras so softly sung you couldn’t even make them out. But that didn’t matter. You still somehow understood.

Not long after this big band performance, she stripped everything right back to a nylon guitar recorded on cassette tapes, releasing ‘The Thrill Of Loneliness’ under the pseudonym ‘Honey Stretton’.

The thrill of my loneliness charms
I seem to be
The only tree
To wash my branches in the sea
I hope I don't disappear
I have never felt free

“I have never felt free” ricocheted round my head for years, the way perfect songs do when they speak for you, voicing silent, shameful wounds.

Honey was easier to pronounce than Hana, and Stretton is a family name, derived from a suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, originally borrowed from a place in the U.K, the two turfs colliding. Hana has kept one foot firmly in each.

She's also kept the latter part of that name, and now goes by 'Hana Stretton'. What was supposed to be a short, once-again-effortless song took off on the internet. The entirely self-released song through the shared label ‘Canigou Records’ now has over a million streams on Spotify. Even now, if you go on TikTok, people post videos of sipping tea cups in the countryside to it, or being in their favourite park, surrounded by plants. Here is someone writing poetry to it.

TikTok · m. ☆

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Back to Hana’s latest album.

C: I’m so inspired by your new album. It’s changed my life trajectory, no joke. When people listen to your album, everyone just goes, “what am I doing?” -

We laugh.

- “Why am I making everything so complicated?”. I remember you saying when you got on the farm, your ego left. You can really hear that in the music.

H: My face has gone red!

C: Love you. Before I dive in, how are you?

H: I’m getting off a train…as in, coming off anti-depressants. But lots of amazing things have happened, actually. I’m going to Tokyo! My brother lives in the Philippines, and he’s lived there for two and a half years. His posting is nearly up, so me and the family are all going over to see him. I realised I could just hop over to Tokyo! 80 dollars, 40 pounds! So I thought, I guess I’m going to Tokyo.

C: I’ve always wanted to go to Tokyo!

H: I’m just really lucky - all these ducks lined up for me to go. My brother lives near there, my family are taking me there. I’m finding all these hilarious places to stay. There are these hole in the walls - they look like morgues.

We laugh again.

H: What happens if I get there and I think, “I’d rather sleep on the street?”

C: I bet you could find fans to stay with! Put out a post, like, “anyone in Tokyo…? I’ll play a gig for you!”.

H: “in your lounge!”. Well, Tokyo is happening, Maria Somerville played me on her show, and I’ve always loved her, and I was asked to support Mount Eerie in Melbourne. I was like, what is happening?! This has been the best week. I feel really, really lucky. It sounds strange, but if I had written a dream list, which we should do more often - I never dream about anything, or want anything, and it’s good to have a north star - all of this would have been right at the top.

(This is what Mount Eerie had to say about Hana’s music in his newsletter):

C: It’s a testament to your music, Hana. You deserve all those things. I have only seen love and absolute adoration for your music, and people including it with Grouper and all the greats. I’m so glad you released it. Everything is so deserved.

H: Bloody weird, it’s really strange. A lot of it is down to luck.

C: No.

H: Yeah.

C: No.

H: Yes!

C: No, okay, well -

H: There are so many people who are a thousand magillian times more deserving who will never be heard.

C: You don’t know how good you are. You never have! There’s a reason all this stuff is happening. It’s definitely true that art belongs to everyone, but the recognition you’re getting isn’t due to luck, it’s because it’s really good. Am I an authority on this? Probably not. I listen to music a lot now, I try to write about music and indulge in being a music lover, and I’ve got to say - your music stands out. Music exists in this real capitalist space. I’m not dealing with that well. And when you listen to your music, it’s outside of that space. It’s very you, it’s very authentic, it’s very egoless. It’s comforting. It really takes you somewhere. I listen to it all the time. If I need to go into another space, or somewhere peaceful, I put your album on.

Wake The Deaf initially described Hana’s music as “bedroom pop from a bygone era” as stated in Super World Indie Tunes, but to me, it’s not bedroom pop. The structures are fluid, archaic, signalling back to when song structures naturally were. Her music has always captured something no one else could quite reach, and the way I describe it now is ‘egolessness’.

Hana creating her Wail EP cassettes with Tiarn Binder’s artwork

When Hana still lived in London, ‘The Thrill Of Loneliness’ inspired her to create her 2016 work ‘Wail’, a soft four-track EP dedicated to women suffering from domestic violence, laced with strings, nylon guitar and a dusty upright Hana found on gumtree, then dragged into her studio shed in South East London.

In ‘Bed’, she sings, ‘I cover up my coward when he’s red.’ I remember asking a while back what that meant. I’ve forgotten the answer now. I thought it meant anger, but I remember Hana vividly describing her lover’s red, embarrassed face. Perhaps it was about shame, the emotion anger goes hand in hand with. I ask her now, via email. She says, “Yeah, you were right about Bed. [it’s] a little parable forewarning him that if he continued to treat people like dirt, it’d come back n bite him someday. A real witchy song hoping to turn a downright-ratbag into a good man.” Someone on reddit has asked for a transcription. Someone replied with, “I want one too. I might try and make one…’

The music in Wail is reminiscent of when films first started being made; slow-burning, grainy romantic stills that eventually catapult into ‘The Rain Thief’, one of the saddest and most satisfying pieces of music I’ve ever heard.

C: Shall I start interviewing you?

H: I’ve just got to calm my red cheeks.

C: Be prepared. There’s a lot more to come. Okay, I’ve got my questions up. Ah, but I’m really enjoying this conversation without them. Okay. Take me back…

We both get the real giggles this time.

H: Take me back, Catrin.

C: Okay. Take me back to why you moved away from a full band sound and picked up a nylon guitar.

H: Moving away. As you know, I move a lot, and I went to France, and then I went to Melbourne. To you, it seems like I’m just in Australia, but I’m constantly moving in this country. I can’t have a band at the moment because I’m always moving. I had to be self-reliant. I arrived in some places, and there were no instruments at all. But someone always has a Spanish guitar, a nylon guitar, or a fifty-dollar Yamaha first guitar. So…I moved away from a band for ease. One day, I’d love to have strings, like you did with Another Sky, and be able to have a big band, and realise certain things musically. But bloody hell, it’s hard work.

C: I’ve just made a mental note - I’m gonna pick up my Granddad’s old violin knocking about in the Crypt and learn it to be in Hana’s band…

Laughter, again.

C: I don’t think strings were ever attainable, even when we used them in Another Sky. We burned through so much money. Rightfully so, string players deserve to be paid. I loved that time, though. Arranging all the string parts. I’ve just been listening to Ex:Re with a 12 string ensemble, actually, the solo project from Elena Tonra.

C: I’ve started teaching kids nylon guitar in schools. And it’s really unlocked my memory of where music started, for me. Is that the same for you?

H: Yeah. I was ten or eleven. I did it for a couple of years, I loved Spanish music. Then I dropped it when I got into Brit. And I got into some…what I would consider now…terrible, terrible music [I silently wonder if she means Hiatus Kaiyote? That seemed to be what every Brit school grad loved back then]. And then I went back to my roots. I’ve done a huge circle. We all do, don’t we? Actually, Catrin, this is so funny. I’m literally realising this about myself for the first time, right now. I’ve gone back to doing the music I loved at ten years old.

C: You can hear how much you love it in your playing, in your structures, in your intuitive strumming patterns. I’m so glad you went back. Well it’s moving forwards, and taking it further, but I’m so glad you went back to what you love. I loved the big band sound, it was really cool, but I’m glad you followed what you actually wanted to do. And what’s easiest to do. Music shouldn’t be convoluted.

H: When it comes to recording, I was totally alone, and the only thing I had was the guitar. So it forced my hand. Before that, I was around so many musicians and ideas. The collaborative effort of nine people in the room - which was amazing, but ridiculous -

C: Is that how many people were in your band?

H: Yeah.

C: I can remember some people, but I didn’t realise it was nine!

H: I don’t think I could have ever realised what I wanted unless I had time alone. It’s my stupid brain.

C: No. I’ve become a teacher, so I’m gonna be really annoying. Every time you put yourself down, I’m gonna say, no. Be kind yourself to be Hana. As a woman, it’s really hard to get people to listen to you in a room.

H: No, honestly, I think this was about me being able to hear myself. I was always able to make choices with the band. Everyone was good with it. There weren’t too many egos in the room. But if I had sat down and recorded at the stage, I don’t think I would have been able to do it. It would have come out as nine voices instead of one. Which might have been way better.

C: Maybe it’s never about what is better, but about what happens. With my band, I love it, but I struggle with people thinking it’s my only identity. And what I’m trying to remember at the moment is that there’s always the future. We’re releasing such angry songs at the moment. And I’m finding it hard identifying with that anger, because I moved past it. Well, sort of. I’m still trying to move through it now. I still circle back, then remind myself I’m not going that way.

Thank you for reading! This is a really special piece - I hope I’m doing it and Hana’s story justice. Please subscribe, because we really dive into the wildfires and floods around the creation of this album next time -

Part 2 out next week!