Welcome Home＜Colored Vinyl＞

Expanding on the soft acoustic and electronic textures of 2015's Pleasure Boy, singer and songwriter Hannah Cohen's third album, Welcome Home, is her first to be produced by partner and frequent collaborator Sam Owens, aka Sam Evian. Given the hazy, nostalgic quality shared by their solo output, what sounds like a promising professional partnership in theory proves to be an effective one in practice here. The album opens with mere ukulele and Cohen's high-pitched, sustained plea, "This is your life," which soon transforms into something more rhythmic and determined but less of this earth on the words "Don't let it just happen to you." The song's layers of cushiony synths, percussive echo, and meandering harmonies follow Cohen through the circular explanations and encouragement involved in motivation ("It is what it is or it is not"). Contrasts between likewise light, billowy sonics and clean snare and guitar tones fill the space beneath Cohen's ethereal, yearning vocals with elegant texture on the majority of the album. She does strip things back, though, midway through the album on the existential cabaret ballad "What's This All About." It offers one of Cohen's more haunting melodies with only time-keeping piano chords as accompaniment. Later, "Return Room" features just voice and arpeggiated acoustic guitar until gentle, sustained synths reinforce the repeated "I won't let you down" before the song evaporates into the ether. Cohen's voice maintains the album's consistently floaty quality through these sparser tracks, making for a relentlessly dreamy set that's lost in thought and desire. ~ Marcy Donelson