Hannah Frances is a Vermont-based vocalist, songwriter, and dancer with roots from Chicago. Her fusion of avant-folk, progressive rock, and jazz can be traced all the way back to 2018’s White Buffalo, which was followed by 2020’s The Horses and 2021’s Bedrock. Earlier this year, following the breakthrough success of her 2024’s Keeper of the Sheperd, Frances announced her signing to Fire Talk and released a deluxe edition of the album. Her fifth LP, Nested in Tangles, out Friday, is another dazzling invitation into her deeply interconnected world. Continuing her collaboration co-producer Kevin Copeland, Frances expands the earthy intricacies of her last album by leaning into graceful, winding maximalism, with contributions from Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen, Sarah and Andy Clausen, Hunter Diamond, Scott Daniel, and Chet Zenor. If Keeper of the Sheperd was a solemn excavation of grief, familial dysfunction, and a turbulent upbringing, Nested in Tangles spirals outward instead of burrowing further in, creating a lush environment through which past and present selves can move and change shape. Gnarled, playful, and ultimately therapeutic, it knows when to breathe fire and softly exhale, nestle and branch out. “Recollections move through in sudden shifting shapes,” she intones on the final track, “I release into the unburdening.”
We caught up with Hannah Frances for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about the vision behind Nested in Tangles, experimenting with guitar tunings, forgiveness, and more.
Keeper of the Shepherd had one of my favorite album covers of last year, and you kindly shared some words about it for our feature. You talked about the idea of “prayerful self-burial,” which helped me contextualize and visualize the new record; instead of digging deep in that way, it seems to scale upward. Given how quickly you started writing this record after finishing the last one, did you feel it growing in a different direction, or with a different set of intentions?
Yeah, it was a year after I finished writing and recording Keeper of the Shepherd that I started this new project. I think the summer after I finished Keeper, I just entered a different musical terrain, and everything was a little bit more whimsical. I was exploring different guitar tunings, because I was teaching a guitar workshop that summer, so I was naturally gravitating towards more experimental, playful guitar parts. It was slower to coalesce: I was going through a lot of emotional stickiness, anxiety, and heaviness, so that was my expression of feeling like I needed to lift myself out of something, whereas I think Keeper of the Shepherd was going into something very deep, really sinking into it. That’s why all that music has a somberness or a density to it that feels very much like being on the ground, in the roots of something, in the dirt and the moss. As this record started to take shape, the visuals I was playing with lyrically – birds, the sun, the sky, the branches, all of it was very different from Keeper of the Shepherd. I think that’s why it started to become clear in my mind that the album cover was definitely going to be trees and tangled branches.
How did you manifest this vision for the cover art?
I have a very visual creative mind – I guess a version of synesthesia. When I’m working on music, I can really see colors and feel it visually. Once I had all the songs and the sequencing, it was just a very natural vision I kept having. I knew I had to find the perfect tree. I was on the hunt for a tree for a good month or so. I was asking all my friends around the country – maybe I was gonna go to the south and find some wild, old live oaks. I ended up going to the West Coast, to California, where I knew there were incredible cypress trees and live oaks. At that time of year, it was April, so the West Coast and the South were the only places that had a lot of life to them, because I live in the Northeast, in Vermont, and everything in April is pretty much still dead. I was like, “I need an album cover pretty soon, so I think I have to go to California to find the perfect trees.” But I always saw red and blue. Obviously, it’s a little on the nose, because I talk about trees and tangled branches. I was like, “There’s no other way I can express this concept.”
I was going to ask about the red, because I was looking at the lyric sheet, and maybe it’s just the doc I got, but certain words were in red, like “punctures,” and I wondered if there was some symbolism to it.
That’s funny, because I think the red is only when we were finalizing the design for the vinyl, some of my original lyrics that my designer had were a little off, and I had to make some edits to that document. The red was basically just so she could see what words needed fixing in her design. But I love that that is still red, because I kind of forgot I did that. It feels appropriate in many ways. I love red, I love the feeling of red. I think it’s just a very powerful and rich color; it makes me feel connected to something very rich and powerful, within myself. That color kept coming to me, this crimson feeling, or a cardinal, a phoenix. I think there’s a part of me that is very fiery that my music taps into and allows me to reclaim.
Another line that’s marked in red is “I believe in the breakage as an opening” on the first song, which is heavily treated vocally. I think having words spoken at the beginning and ending of the record has a grounding effect, especially because there’s a lot more sonic clarity to the final song. I’m curious when that idea of vocal manipulation came about for the opening.
I think it conceptually makes sense to have it be very muffled and manipulated in the beginning, and then at the end, there’s a lightness and a clarity to my voice that feels like I had to go through the journey of the album to get to. But in the studio, we added the spoken word very much last. That was the last thing we did. All the songs were finished, and I had been thinking if I wanted to sing on ‘Nested in Tangles’, to have actual lyrics anywhere, but no parts were coming to me melodically. So we experimented with just speaking. I was like, “What if I just said all of this?” And I loved it, but it’s hard to sometimes listen to yourself talk. I can listen to myself sing – that’s no problem, but it’s the talking that I think can make me feel like, “Who is that?”
When we were listening back to the spoken word, especially in the mixing process, I kept asking him to muffle it and manipulate it even more. Maybe I wasn’t as conscious at the time, but I subconsciously was like, “I don’t think I’m supposed to fully hear everything that I’m saying.” I wanted it to start off and you understand what I’m saying, and then there is a garbledness to it, which I honestly had to work really hard to remember what I was saying. At the end of it, I was like, “I can’t even hear half of the things I’m saying. But that’s the point!” There was something there that I just kept wanting him to mangle it even more, because I wanted to sound like something else. With the energy of ‘Nested in Tangles’, which is so angular and chaotic, having just a clear voice makes no sense. But then by ‘Heavy Light’, there’s a peacefulness to it. By that time in the record, I feel like it makes sense for my voice to be just more peaceful.
When you’re writing melodies, do you tend to have a set of words in front of you, or do the lyrics come later?
I think it depends on the song. I’ve experienced both of those, where I have a poem or lyrics, and as I start to fit them into a melody, I have to then adjust accordingly. I first write on guitar, so usually I have to find my ground with a guitar part, and then usually a vocal melody comes to me. It’s very in response to the guitar part. The way I write lyrics, at first it’s a lot of gibberish, and I’m humming – it’s such a nebulous, mysterious process that I think no one can truly explain, because it feels almost spiritual. With ‘Nested and Tangles’ and ‘Heavy Light’, for a while, no vocal melody was coming to me, which I have to take at face value. If I don’t hear a vocal melody, then there’s not supposed to be one. But there are things I want to say conceptually, poetically, so they became practice in just sitting here with a pen and paper, like, “What do I want to write about this record?”
When you’re coming up with a guitar part, is changing tunings a way of getting unstuck?
Definitely. I know Joni Mitchell has said this before, and I really resonate with it, but she was like, “I like to keep myself uncomfortable. There’s always something that I’m trying to figure out and that I don’t know, and I think tunings really do that, because you just have this fretboard where you put it into a new tuning, and you have no idea how to navigate it, so you have to figure out a whole new puzzle. In exploring a very unfamiliar terrain, it’s amazing how that keeps your mind so stimulated and receptive to new ideas, because you’re not in your own way. I think that people who write in standard tuning or have kind of mastered the guitar theoretically, you can get into patterns or routines in terms of approaching the guitar that can keep you very comfortable and stagnant. I just love that I’m always keeping myself on my own toes. I start a new song, and I’m like, “What a weird tuning,” and I’m tinkering around, just playing with dissonance, playing with new notes that are rubbing up against each other. And then you get something bizarre like ‘Life’s Work’, where it’s a very explorative guitar tuning. ‘Nested in Tangles’ also came from that tuning, and both of those songs kind of blasted open my mind, creatively.
There’s beauty in comfort, too. I would say ‘Steady in the Hand’ is one of those songs on the record where I wanted to make something that was really comfortable to play. It’s a pretty simple guitar part and a very accessible structure. I found a way to fit into this record so that there were comfortable parts of the album for me and for others who are listening. You get to ride the wave of comfortability, and then it’s leaving you a little uncomfortable, challenging you, but then rewarding you for sitting with the discomfort.
Does that experimentalism make it trickier to bring the songs into a collaborative context? Or is it about working with musicians who can tune into them pretty intuitively?
I think it’s the latter. I tend to work with jazz conservatory musicians who just really don’t care about the tuning. That’s not important to them – they can just hear what the chord is and work within that. They know how to transcribe my music in a way that I can’t articulate, because I know it very emotionally. I know it very instinctually, but they know it intellectually, so I let them figure it out, and I work with really heady people who love to do that. I work with people who emotionally resonate with my music. With Daniel Rossen, I told him nothing. I don’t tell my collaborators anything. I don’t send them sheet music, I don’t tell them the key of the song, I’m just like, “Here’s the recorded song. Add whatever you want to add. I’m hearing some strings here, I’m hearing a huge climax, a beautiful growing part at the end, I’m hearing a sax solo here.” That’s usually as much as I give, and I have a lot of trust in the collaborators that I work with to communicate what needs to be communicated.
I feel like part of what they bring throughout the record is a kind of loudness, which has been an interesting thread across your work in terms of how you interact with it. I’m curious what role that maximalism came to serve for you on this record.
Right from the get, I was like, “This is gonna be a more maximalist record.” There’s a lot going on a lot of the time on this record, but you also have moments like ‘Steady in the Hand’ that are more sparse; it’s trying to find the exact parts that are necessary, but not doing anything more than that. Kevin, my co-producer, and I can throw paint at the wall, and then we peel some layers back, and then we’re like, “We don’t need all of that.” But I want to hear the most maximalist version and then take it away from there. That’s usually what I encourage all of the people who arrange for the record: do as much as you want, as much as you have capacity for, give me a bunch of different ideas for solos. Chet, my guitarist, did the big, crazy solo in ‘Heavy Light’, and then also the end solo in ‘Falling From and Further’, which is a medley of two different solo takes. I love maximalism, but I think Kevin and I both know when the song needs less. I think that’s just the art of producing and having a tasteful maximalism.
That’s a fine line that we have tried to balance on this record, and I tried to do that with Keeper of the Shepherd as well. I did get some extra parts from my saxophonist, and he did some clarinet stuff, and then we’re sitting with it all in the studio, and we’re just like, “I don’t think I want any of that. I don’t think it needs that at all.” But I would rather hear it in its fullest form and go from there, as opposed to starting with minimalism, because I’m just not a minimalist in general. I love ornaments, I love a lot going on musically, and that’s a lot of the music I am inspired by and listen to. It’s busy, complex, stimulating music, so I think that a lot of these songs really called for that on this record.
Even though it’s sparser than the rest of the songs, the wind instruments and Kevin’s pedal steel are tastefully incorporated throughout ‘Steady in the Hand’.
That one was difficult, actually. That was the last one we finished mixing because it stands on its own so strongly without anything. We were just like, “Do we even need percussion? Do we need another guitar tinkering in the background?” We did sit with that one quite a bit, because we didn’t want to take away from the story, and we didn’t want to detract from my voice and my lead guitar. So we were really tasteful with what we added, and same with Chet, who did some extra guitar parts. I remember him being like, “I don’t really hear what my role is here, but I just kind of tinkered around.” Me and Kevin spliced that up, and we were like, “We don’t need all of that. Maybe at this one part Chet’s guitar comes in, and it’s really tasteful, and then it goes away.” I think that is Kevin’s specialty. He’s just an incredible producer and has such a confident and fine ear for what a song needs.
In the arc of the album, something I also think about is not just for a song to stand on its own, but how it actually fits if you’re listening from start to finish. Are my ears tired by track 5? Do I want to hear ‘Surviving You’ right here? No, I want to hear ‘Beholden To’,bring my sonic ear and my brain down, and then I’m ready for ‘Steady in the Hand’, which is a much more tender listening environment, and then ‘A Body, a Map’ transitions you out of that space into ‘Surviving You’.
Not to get too heady with it, but in terms of emotional processing, it also feels like moving from a subconscious place with the instrumentals to something more conscious. Is that a field recording of kids playing on ‘Beholden To’?
Yeah, I captured kids playing at a playground, and Kevin and I just threw it in. That’s in ‘Beholden To’, and then it comes back at the end of ‘Heavy Light’.
Leading into ‘Steady in the Hand’, we’re sort of steeped in this feeling before getting into the details of a formative memory, which elicits one of the most striking vocal performances on the record. Were you nervous about capturing the definitive vocal take?
It’s funny, because ‘Steady in the Hand’ is the most musically straightforward, but it was the most difficult, I would say, to capture emotionally. I remember this very vividly about recording ‘Floodplain’ for Keeper the Shepherd. It was the same feeling, where I was just such a perfectionist because it was so vulnerable. I was like, “This vocal take has to be absolutely perfect.” I mean, I hold myself to that standard for every song, which is why my music is challenging and stressful a lot of the time to record. But with ‘Steady in the Hand’, I did so many takes because I had to be so emotionally clear about what I was delivering.
I think it was the most difficult to record and also mix, because I was such a perfectionist about how my voice was mixed with my guitar. That balance was actually quite difficult to strike. I was very discontent with my guitar tone, and for it to be mostly a strummed acoustic – I was very picky about how that sounds, because I don’t love the sound of a strummed acoustic. The brightness of a strum – I just wanted it to sound so damp and dark. That one actually took quite a lot of energy to fine-tune, because the stakes are high for that song.
You’re speaking about that song kind of in contrast to ‘Surviving You’. But there’s a nuance in how the album deals with dualities, whether that’s heavy and light or “tender heart and jagged hand.” ‘Surviving You’ represents the blood-curdling, raucous, knotty side of the record, and it’s leaning into that, but it doesn’t feel like a negation of the other side.
I have an ability, I think, as a person to hold a lot of both-and. In general, I can understand something, and I can also understand the other side. There’s a way of emotional processing where I can feel anger and understanding, or I can feel pain and joy. There’s so much both-and that I think comes from living through a lot of complexity. I think at a really young age, I had to learn how to hold duality, and this record is really tapping into that. With ‘Surviving You’, I had to tap into a lot of anger and hold space for that, because if you don’t hold space for that, you can’t truly hold space for lightness. I think ‘Heavy Light’ is very much the summation of that. There’s no light without shadow, and there’s no shadow without light; those must coexist.
I feel like it’s understanding the complexity of the self, but also in relation to, and as a result of, family and trauma. Before reading about the healing work that inspired the record, I recognized this process in a lot of the therapeutic language and pattern recognition that’s artfully woven into the record. How mindful were you of integrating this language into the poetry of the record?
I think very conscious of that. At this time, I was kind of having my mind blown by working with a new therapist who really radically stretched my capacity to hold very complex emotions and understand my childhood and memory and validate my experience in ways that therapists in the past haven’t been able to do, or didn’t have the exact resonant language for me. And I’ve been in therapy since I was 11. At this time that I started writing a lot, I was going through a huge rupture. I was trying to find compassion and empathy, but also validating my own experience. There’s this therapeutic model called “parts work” and internal family systems, which is a trauma model of reparenting yourself and really forming a safe environment for all of your parts to kind of find an integration. A part of me is angry, a part of me is scared. Expanding this framework of healing to hold space for dualities – a lot of my language was coming from that process.
My writing is so intrinsic with what I’m truly going through that it has to be authentic, or I can’t sing it. I can’t sing something that’s not authentic. It really opened my world a lot to be framing things this way, and I think this could be an invitation for other people who are processing complex relationships and experiences. Maybe this process that I’m going through could also be shared and very much spoken about, so that others can feel maybe liberated or empowered to do the same.
The lack of language in ‘Beholden To’ made me think of music as a way of keeping that playground up and running. There’s another duality here: the adult self that’s reckoning with the complexity and processing what this all means now, and another part that’s simply reconnecting with the pre-verbal version of yourself.
Absolutely. A lot of the work that I do is reclaiming my child selves – you know, there’s a teenage self, and there’s a child self, and there’s a pre-verbal version of me who is still within me. A lot of the time when I’m in therapy and trying to navigate very adult experiences, she and I have to do that process of reminding my inner child that she doesn’t have to do this. She’s allowed to just go play. She just wants to play piano, she wants to run outside, she wants to go to the playground. She doesn’t have to navigate this heavy world that I’m navigating as an adult 28-year-old. That’s been a huge process: creating an environment that my inner children trust me enough to take care of what I need to take care of as an adult, and they don’t have to. Our inner children truly do just want to play.
The video for ‘The Space Between’ is that. It’s the reclamation of my inner child, and it’s very much a dream world. I grew up as a dancer, so dance was a very important part of this visual. But I was dancing with my inner child, and she was teaching me how to play again, basically. I had all these imaginary animal creatures, and they had these animal heads, and they’re dancing – all my inner parts are now dancing together in this very whimsical world. That’s the theme of the record: holding space for everything, reclaiming my inner child. I’m creating a space where there is play juxtaposed with heaviness, there’s lightness, and that is just the dance of life.
How much stock do you put now in the idea of forgiveness? Does the idea of “unforgiving lightness” that you bring up stand as a kind of alternative to that?
It’s so complex – in society in general, and especially this religious perspective of forgiveness that you must forgive. And that is seen as some sort of ultimate, I don’t know, wisdom? As if you could just forgive. Unpacking what that really means, I think it’s really easy for people to say it very casually. “Oh, just forgive and forget.” What does forgiveness truly look like, though? Because I think when you’ve experienced harm in any way, whether that is the greatest injustices that someone could experience – that I have not even personally experienced – I could never tell someone to just forgive. I’ve really sat with that idea of forgiveness. To forgive someone who is not taking accountability is a very complicated experience. If they can’t acknowledge that they have hurt you, how could you forgive them? There’s no accountability or responsibility. How can you live with that? How can you move forward in your life? Maybe without contact with that person – but you still are experiencing that and having to process that within yourself. I had a difficult relationship with my dad, and he passed, and there was no resolve there. Just no resolve. He just suddenly passed, and I’ve had to live the last decade trying to process what that looks like.
I think there has to be other ways to find resolution within yourself that doesn’t involve the other person. I say, “I don’t forgive, but I do let it live,” meaning there’s a space between me and you, and there is an ability to move forward in my life with my own experience of resolve. I think that’s personal to everybody what that really looks like, but you don’t have to forgive someone. That doesn’t mean that you are immature, and you’re not healing, or you are not, like, a wise being. You can be all of those things and not necessarily absolve someone of their harmful behavior, but you can resolve.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Hannah Frances’ Nested in Tangles is out October 10 via Fire Talk.
