I was sent a lovely Twitter message from Ms Hammers recently asking me to check out her music but unbeknownst to her I already had listened to a few songs and was looking for a suitable point to share her album on my blog. That time is now and I hope you enjoy her tunes as much as I do. She has a lovely minimalist approach to her music which isn't quite folk, certainly not Americana but far too cerebral to be dismissed as pop. Guitar and ukelele seem to be her preferred musical weapons of choice but the clear winner would always be her voice. There's shades of a more mainstream sounding Jenny Lewis or an American Laura Marling or, dare I say it, Hope Sandoval's shy younger sister but let's not deal in trite comparisons here; she's definitely her own woman.
I like the almost 50s feel she brings to her slower ballads and the lo-fi production allows her a more expansive approach, her voice taking the listener to places that would be twinned with the Minnesota towns of the Garrison Keiller radio shows. To some she would be too small town, too twee but I think her songwriting is perfect especially when she deals with the subject of love, 'She'll Never Love You' being a particularly good example of this. Maybe I've been listening to too much Icelandic folk of late but tracks such as 'Modest Little House', 'Sailor', 'The Letter' sound like they might have been written by Ólöf Arnalds. Compare and contrast those three tracks with 'Crazy Car' by Arnalds. I hope Ms Hammers takes this as the huge compliment that it's intended to be.
You can download the entire album for $8 which works out at £5, give or take a few pence. I'm going to write to her and ask if she has CDs too. My preferred medium is the kind you can pick up and touch. I find electronic media lacks something for me, somewhat ironic when describing such ethereal music but I'm nothing if not a mass of contradictions. I know good music when I hear it however; you can too, below.
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