Born in the depths of Reddit, raised on pandemic piano live streams, and honed on the UK’s jazz scene, the music of Hohnen Ford would perfectly fit for a potential sequel of La La Land or could easily be heard in the background of Mad Men. If some of the five new tracks from her sophomore EP, ‘I Wish I Had A God’, had squeezed between Doris Day and Ella Fitzgerald on Don Draper’s daily soundtrack, no one would even notice the catch—including himself.
Formally, Ford’s music usually draws comparisons to obvious icons of American music like Joni Mitchell and Carole King or, more recently, Waxahatchee and Laura Marling. In fact, she primarily gravitates towards jazzier tunes. This is fitting for an alumna of the jazz department at The Royal Academy of Music in London, where the likes of Elton John, Annie Lennox, and Michael Nyman also studied. No matter how much critics might draw parallels between her oeuvre and contemporary folk musicians, the soul of her sonics lies somewhere in traditional pop, in the realm of Frank Sinatra, Julie London, Dean Martin, or Peggy Lee.
Ford brings recognizable elements of her indie folk peers and transforms them into timeless melodies that Ryan Gosling’s and Emma Stone’s or even Gene Kelly’s characters could easily dance to across a night park in LA or a rainy NY. In the slow-burning opener ‘Only Way Out’, she gradually accelerates the album’s pace with lulling singing that speeds up at the end, dissolving into a pure Bridgerscore coda reminiscent of ‘I Know The End’. The next cut, ‘Honest Mistake’, picks up right where it was left, appropriating the firm rubber-bridge guitar strums right out from Old Style Guitar Shop—only to morph a few seconds later into a soaring piano ballad evoking somehow either Impressionist composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel or Yann Tiersen’s score for Amélie.
—
—
“Didn’t mean to start a riot / In the California quiet”, Ford sings in ‘Honest Mistake’ as if making excuses for the next playful cut, “Another Lifetime”, where she gracefully mixes Regina Spektor’s lively and engaging approach to piano sonics with Marika Hackman’s somber and atmospheric soundscapes. This is the only instance on the EP where Ford gets as close to conventional indie music as possible, adding swaggering drums and almost dEUS-like angular, distorted guitar riffs. This little guitar mischief perfectly shows one of the potential routes for developing her sound on the way to a full-length venture, the rise of anticipation for which is inevitable after this small but bold set of bittersweet offerings.
It’s very tempting to place Ford among trendy indie folk contemporaries like Lizzy McAlpine, Katy Kirby, or Maya Hawke, but her genre affiliation always eludes a touch, like Ryan Gosling’s understated smile. Something closest in spirit is exemplified by Julie Byrne, Aldous Harding, The Weather Station, or Marina Allen. Yet, Ford goes further—she levels out or almost completely excludes traditional folk instruments from her arrangements, emphasising emotive piano motifs and her own voice. Some might say that the perfect match for her nostalgic music is Laufey’s vintage balladry, but Ford doesn’t delve too deep into 1940s-1960s, carefully blending it with modern sounds instead.
Anyway, by listing these names, we don’t get even close to the core idea of ‘I Wish I Had A God’. “This EP is dedicated to Imogen Shelley-Moore, a dear friend of mine who passed away last summer”, says Ford. “I’d wish I had a god so I could see you again”, she sings in the inescapably sad title track “I Wish I Had a God” in the vein of Charlie Puth. Although this grandstanding penultimate cut is delicately buried under the majority of the EP’s tracks, it plays the most important role here because this whole collection of introspective dirges is built around key moments of their friendship. These thoughts are delivered so subtly and piercingly that they evoke a great memoir Stay True by Hua Hsu, who would definitely like this record.
This elevates ‘I Wish I Had A God’ from a solid collection of diaristic ballads to a timeless statement catapulted into eternity, needing no one’s approval. Still, when artists express their gut-wrenching feelings at such a vulnerable and honest level, it connects their music with listeners in the best possible way.
8/10
Words: Igor Bannikov
—
