Hannah Cohen is a singer-songwriter who grew up in San Francisco before moving to New York City at the age of 17. Her father, West Coast jazz drummer Myron Cohen, often invited renowned musicians to the house, but it wasn’t until leaving home that she began singing and writing her own songs. Working at the legendary Village Vanguard jazz club, Cohen found community among the city’s music scene, with some of her friends then contributing to her debut album, 2012’s Child Bride. She went on to release 2015’s Pleasure Boy and guested on several records, including the 2016 debut LP by her longtime partner and collaborator Sam Owens, who records as Sam Evian. In 2019, the year after Cohen and Owens moved to the Catskills and started converting their home and barn into a recording studio and retreat known as Flying Cloud, she released her third album, Welcome Home.
Cohen’s first album in six years, Earthstar Mountain, arriving on Friday, is a different kind of invitation to the life the pair have built, surrounded by beauty both natural and musical, once again produced by Owens and featuring peers such as Sufjan Stevens and Clairo. It’s just as lush and enchanting as anything she’s put out before, but dustier and sneakily vulnerable, too, bridging the ordinary and magical, pleasure and frustration, even as they seem to breeze through it all. “The rug could get pulled out/ The heartbreak could get loud,” she reminds herself on the closer. “Better to measure it in dog years.”
We caught up with Hannah Cohen for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about her earliest musical memories, her relationship with the Catskills, her mindset going into Earthstar Mountain, and more.
Earthstar Mountain is framed as a love letter to the Catskills. For you, when does that love story begin?
Well, I think it begins before we moved here. Sam and I were coming up here a lot together and fell in love with the area, specifically around the Ashokan Reservoir, Woodstock, the Catskills. There’s a really special energy here. We live in a rural area, in the woods, on state land, and I think the Catskills have really shown me a different way of looking at life and experiencing time. Being so immersed in nature has shifted everything in my life – the way I spend my time, the way I look at things, the way I experience things. It’s way different now since moving to such a nature-forward place. I just appreciate the small things so much more since moving up here.
On the album cover, you literally center yourself around an 1882 lithograph of the Catskills. What led you to use that image?
I was trying to find an image to use for the album or something close to it. My mom works in the book art world, the antiquarian print press, and she said, “You should reach out to the Institute of History and Art in Albany. I bet they’d have that in their collections.” And of course, they did. So we reached out to them, and they gave me permission and licensing to use the image. I just fell in love with it. To me, the record cover has these little vignettes, and I felt like those could be a song each. I think about a song being like a window into someone’s life, a little keepsake, so I felt there was some synergy there. There is a history of the Catskills being this sort of haven for artists, writers, and painters, and that continues to happen. People are still drawn to it – artists of all mediums, musicians, singers, painters, writers, sculptors. I find that really inspiring and encouraging. There’s just this sense of community and making and creating up here that encourages that type of behavior.
I wonder if there’s a clear split in how you see your life before and after moving to the Catskills, in a way that’s similar to when you moved to New York. I assume maybe the first move felt more drastic or formative.
Moving upstate, to the mountains, it’s been a very drastic change from living in a city. Having no responsibilities for your trash other than taking it out to the front of your building; now we take our trash to a recycling center. There was no relation to handling the elements outside – the snow, ice, and extreme weather – the city takes care of that. Living in the woods, you’re looking out for yourself more in some ways: chopping wood, keeping the house heated. There’s a lot of manual labor that you’re doing, and I love that. I have a lot more responsibilities for myself up here than I did in the city. We also cook all of our meals here, mostly because we live far away from restaurants. We’ve become better chefs since moving up here, that’s for sure. I still feel like I’m a kid – I’m not, but I’m growing up. These years of being upstate have been very formative for me in terms of what I want in my life and how I want to spend my time.
When you think about your earliest musical memories, is there one kind of music that really moved you the most growing up?
When I was a kid, jazz was very present in the house. My dad’s a jazz musician – he’s a drummer – so we listened to a lot of Coltrane, but also the great singers like Billie Holiday, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Al Green. That music was very impactful on me.
Could you share an early experience that really encouraged you to pursue music, and one thing that maybe held you back?
I kind of dabbled in music when I was a kid. I took piano lessons and guitar lessons, and I always loved singing, but I never took any singing classes. I remember my friend in high school – she was in chorus, and we were hanging out, and I started singing along to a song. She told me she thought I had a good voice, and because she was in chorus in school, having a peer tell me that was cool. Something that discouraged me from singing or making music? I think that’s mostly my own negative thought process. When I’m hard on myself about my singing, I feel like my worst enemy. But I’ve been really lucky to have supportive friends who are musicians and artists that I’ve always been encouraged by.
How do you feel like your perspective on songwriting has shifted from Welcome Home to the new record?
I think the shift in perspective is just: use your time wisely, be with people who make you feel good, try to do the things you love. I feel so lucky that I’m trying to make music my career, but it’s not lost on me that being able to sing for your job, to sing for your supper, is a really cool thing. But perspective-wise, what really shines brightly for me is the idea that anything can mean everything. A mushroom in the woods that you find can shift your whole day or your whole perspective. I think that kind of runs through me at all times. I’m really sentimental and sensitive, and being in nature, in this place, I feel very protected by it in a way that’s really comforting.
From the beginning? Or is it something you’ve felt more intensely over the past few years?
I feel more connected to it every year that I’m here because the patterns repeat, and I notice them every year. We’re coming into spring now, and it’s starting to smell a specific way. You’re starting to see little things, buds and plants, peek through the dirt again. There’s this sort of routine that feels very comforting, that I get to witness every year. It’s like we’re old friends – I’m still very new here, but it really feels like I’ve found a companion in a way.
As a product, a thing that’s about to be released into the world, Earthstar Mountain feels to me like that one line in ‘Rag’: “a measure of time passing quietly.”
I think that lyric is about observing time in a different way – experiencing time through something like a rag on the side of the road, seeing it deteriorate over time and stay there in one place. I found comfort in checking in with this rag I saw on the side of the road for years, walking past it. It roots back to the idea that anything can mean everything. This rag on the side of the road reminds me of time passing, of tenderness in all things.
You started working on the new album as an idea pretty soon after Welcome Home. I wonder how the revolving door of collaborators at Flying Cloud affected the pace or your mindset around how you process your own songs.
I think because of our crazy schedule, I’m sort of forced – not forced, it’s my own doing – to let the songs marinate and just hang out as they were for a while. I kept writing, and then I’d write more songs, bumping old ones off the record. Things really started to take shape last year and the year before, but especially over the summer when I recorded a couple more songs: ‘Mountain’ and ‘Una Spiaggia’, which is a cover. Those two songs helped seal the record and the sequence. They were like missing puzzle pieces that made the record feel whole for me. I don’t think I would’ve had the same record if I’d put it out even two years ago – I was in a place where I actually could have put the record out, but I kept writing and rearranging it. Having people up here all the time, constantly creating in the studio, brings a lot of life into our house and the studio that’s separate from our house.
I love how ‘Mountain’ juxtaposes the idea of loss as a mountain of stillness with a propulsive arrangement. What do you remember about tracking that song and having Sufjan Stevens sing on it?
I had recorded it with Sam, and he had the ideas for the guitars. I love his solo on the song, the slide; it’s really emotive and beautiful. I think it was his way of expressing his grief too, because we all lost somebody really special to us. We recorded that last January, I believe. It’s a really special song to me. Sufjan played on ‘Una Spiaggia’, as well, and he came to hang out with us, listen to the record, and heard some backing harmonies he wanted to add to ‘Mountain’, so he added those. I’ve been working with Sufjan for the last couple of years – I sang on his last record, Javelin. He’s a really close friend and collaborator. Since moving upstate, we’ve become closer, and he’s always encouraging me to write and work on music. I really cherish his friendship and our musical connection.
The rendition of Ennio Morricone’s ‘Una Spiaggia’ has a magical quality to it. Clairo played on it too, right?
Yeah, Claire came and played clarinet, and she did a little singing – there’s a harmony at the end of the song. The collaborations with Sufjan and Claire were very casual. It was like, “Hey, do you want to come over and play on this?” And they were up for it. We have so many musician friends who live in the area that are extremely talented and who I really admire. It was cool to have them on the project. And I’ll also say, my biggest inspiration and musical idol – I live with him. I’m his biggest fan. I’m such a fan of his music and production, and then I also live with him. [laughs] He’s also my partner. It’s never lost on me, but sometimes, when you live with someone, you kind of forget – I don’t forget who Sam is, but when you’re in a relationship, you’re talking about dishes or whatever, I’m like, “I’m talking about dishes with Sam Evian.”
‘Dog Years’ closes the album with this idea that uncertainty reigns even when you feel like you’re living your dream life or you’re in a secure place. Why was it important for you to end with that sentiment, and how does it resonate with you now?
I feel like that song is very powerful. Sonically, it’s a cool way to end the record because it’s kind of in this different realm between genres. It’s sort of its own thing. I felt like that song was a good bookend to the record in a way, both lyrically and musically.
I’ve interviewed Sam twice now, and the first time, four years ago, I asked him to share one thing that inspired him about you. I feel compelled to ask you the same question, but I also wonder if there’s something that you’re aware of now, as a result of this collaboration or just time passing, that you maybe wouldn’t have been able to say then.
Well, I really respect him so much for his musical prowess. He’s like a secret weapon – he’s such a strong producer, and he thinks about production not only as a producer but as an engineer. He’s also like a song doctor, you know? He studied composition, and he’s an incredible musician. He started out on saxophone, and he can play so many instruments. I really look up to him musically, but I also feel like the music we make together, because I’m an untrained, self-taught musician, there’s this blend that I think is really unique. We bring so many different things to the table. Mine can be esoteric and stream-of-consciousness, and his is more studied. I feel like we complete each other musically because we bring such different things to the table, and I really cherish that. He’s a musical giant to me, and I feel really lucky that I get to work with him.
I don’t take it lightly because it’s really hard to navigate working with your partner on music – it can be challenging at times. We really try to be aware of that. And I think working on music with him is a way we connect and bond together. Of course, I’m going to write things about him – or sometimes I don’t, but parts of our lives come into our music. So we’re talking about them through music in a way, which is sort of therapeutic for us.
Given your busy schedules, how do you go about making space for just the two of you to make music together?
Uusually, it starts with me writing the songs on my own, and then I bring them to him. We’ll usually work in the evenings together after he’s done with his day. He’s so busy – he’s running his own career and he’s an artist on his own, so we have to be respectful of each other’s time, because we don’t have a lot of time on our own. We have to be really mindful about it. I think that’s also a reason why it took me so long to make a record – we’re kind of competing with so many bands and people coming up here that when we do have time, it’s usually us taking a break. To work on music again is kind of a lot. Not that that’s a complaint, but it’s just life. Life is busy.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Hannah Cohen’s Earthstar Mountain is out March 28 via Bella Union/Congrats Records.
