With Nested in Tangles, Hannah Frances continues to smooth out her vision of Americana music that lands somewhere between early-’70s Laurel Canyon and Nashville and late-’00s Brooklyn as defined by avant-folk groups like Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear—artists for whom traditional pop structures felt too easy. Frances herself describes these songs as “knotty and chromatic” with unconventional time signatures, with Grizzly Bear guitarist Daniel Rossen providing more than just spiritual guidance across these tracks, as he also contributes guitar, keys, percussion, and cello, as well as some backing vocals.
Lyrically, Nested in Tangles sees Frances learning to justify her pent-up anger—something that may not always come through in compositions inspired by Steve Reich and the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. The “tangled nest of stories” that unfolds is largely defined by a sense of catharsis achieved in the wake of Somatic EMDR therapy, which helped the songwriter process past traumas and work through the lingering anxieties they left in their wake. “The body is the map, the body carries memory, and I was mapping my body and nervous system and wanted to translate that experience musically,” she shares.
With the record out now via Fire Talk, Frances went into a little more detail on all nine of the album’s tracks, doing some mapping herself for the complex musical and lyrical themes found throughout Nested in Tangles. Listen along below, and purchase the record here.
1. “Nested in Tangles”
“Nested in Tangles” was my first experience composing a fully instrumental piece exploring non-lyrical vocalization, which then expanded my approach to the rest of the album. I was listening to Steve Reich’s Octet from Music for a Large Ensemble constantly at this time, and was also inspired by Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel. Partitia for 8 Voices by Caroline Shaw and Roomful of Teeth, too. Something subconscious was being tickled, and all the dissonant vocal work and polyrhythmic contemporary classical music I was feeling inspired by fed into this piece. The spoken-word prose is in effect laying out the tangled nest of stories that come after.
2. “Life’s Work”
This is one of the wackiest songs I’ve ever made. Evidently I’m a retired theater kid in love with the drama, it’s true. It’s in the same guitar tuning as “Nested in Tangles,” which in and of itself is very dissonant. So the chord progression that was coming out was very knotty and chromatic, which lent itself to this internal experience of emotional tension. I was processing a lot of family bullshit at this time, and these lyrics really hit that nail on the head more directly than other songs I’ve made. Unpacking projections and manipulation and lies all while almost laughing at the absurdity of it all. Daniel Rossen added some very theatrical instrumentation and emailed me with the files saying, “I hope this isn’t leaning too The Muppets for you.” To which I said, “It’s perfect.”
3. “Falling From and Further”
This one came from a very tender place tha’is hard to articulate. At its core, it is about the complex push-and-pull experience of wanting to trust but being afraid to, and being aware that you’re afraid and knowing where that fear comes from but having to do the slow work of healing. Holding grief for the ways fear has taken over and led me to push away people who I’ve loved and who have loved me. It’s a healing ever ongoing, and I’m grateful I put it into a song I can return to.
4. “Beholden To”
“Beholden To” is intentionally placed here as a transition out of the first three stories into “Steady in the Hand.” The first three are so dense and turbulent that in order to open up some emotional capacity, I found myself wanting an interlude to slow down my heart and be able to listen deeper. I could live in this one forever, over and over. There’s a field recording of children playing in the playground, which ties in thematically and pulls at the heartstrings.
5. “Steady in the Hand”
This song is an open canvas to me and represents a lot. It wasn’t necessarily written about anyone in particular, but I can hear many relationships in it—romantic, friendship, family. I hear heartache and longing that’s boundless and is just the imprint of being alive and loving and losing in the myriad ways that we all do throughout life. It feels timeless, and I’m sure I’ll grow into it and around it.
6. “A Body, a Map”
Likewise with “Beholden To,” this interlude is strategically placed to transition out of “Steady in the Hand” into “Surviving You”—it would’ve been too jarring back-to-back, and I like working back up the anger. This one was originally seven minutes long, and I hope to release the Extended Club Mix someday soon. It’s mathy, and [co-producer Kevin Copeland] and I had a lot of fun with creating patterns with the shifting time signatures. Conceptually speaking, I was deep in Somatic EMDR therapy, which is memory re-processing rooted in the body—actually feeling your emotions rather than thinking and intellectualizing them. The body is the map, the body carries memory, and I was mapping my body and nervous system and wanted to translate that experience musically.
7. “Surviving You”
A heavy hitter. Anger has always been difficult to justify for me, because I’ve experienced such gnarly gaslighting by extremely defensive people, so my own experiences have been invalidated and muddy for me to understand. It’s taken a lot of time and work and space from these relationships to truly affirm that “I feel hurt and angry and I deserved better.” Writing this one helped me get there.
8. “The Space Between” (feat. Daniel Rossen)
My favorite on the album. An exploration of forgiveness and how that can look when there’s no resolve or possibility of reconciliation. How do we move forward in our lives in the spaces left? How can we unburden ourselves for our own wellbeing while also holding others accountable and be able to live in that nuance?
9. “Heavy Light”
“Heavy Light” is a continued exploration of contradiction. The spoken-word bookends the album and created a throughline from “Nested in Tangles.” The prose in the first song lays out all the chaos and tangled stories, and the prose in “Heavy Light” finishes with a sense of release and acceptance, acknowledging what is here and what is mine and not mine. Musically it’s so adventurous and triumphant, which is due to the expansive collaboration with Sarah Clausen, Scott Daniel, Andy Clausen, and Chet Zenor, who added the most gorgeous arrangements that really brought that narrative to life.
