As spring carries on, Hannah Cohen has captured a sound that doesn’t impose, but coexists. Shifting perspectives, the New York, by-way-of the bay area singer-songwriter has created an album where the music itself feels like it’s listening, becoming the realm it makes space in.
Bearing a tenderly mystical quality, Earthstar Mountain sounds as if it wasn’t so much produced, but more so discovered as one would a mushroom while wandering the mossy forest floor, innocently hidden until it is not. Feeling that it is guided by intuition, more so than intention, the record itself gives way to the sense that each song was cultivated by the elements around it. Inherently so, as it was written and recorded with partner and producer, Sam Owens (AKA Sam Evian), at their home studio in the Catskills, where the surrounding setting seeps itself into each track along the way. The result, a collection of songs uniquely polished, though equally weather-worn in a way that fosters a feeling akin to the magic of our surroundings. And it’s not just a feeling that Cohen has captured worth noting, but also the direct compassion in the written, whether it be directed toward a departed friend, or the factor of dependability within a left-behind rag on the side of the road. Unflinchingly-human lyricism, in tandem with the music’s hypnotic instrumentation, makes time spent in the world of Earthstar Mountain naturally immersive, elemental, and tenderly spellbinding.
Cohen’s LP4 also offers what I often refer to as a spiritual element within the listening experience, as it invokes, stirs, and immediately inspires. A quality shared with other folk-favourites of mine, whether it be Fleet Foxes self titled album, Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, Nico’s Desertshore, or more recently, Naima Bock’s Below a Massive Dark Land. More so meditative, or an impression, rather than a palpable entity, the spirit carried along the current of the album expands beyond existing as just the sum of its parts. This is ever-so-evident from the drop of the needle, with the charming opener, “Dusty.” Swirling flutes dance around verdant percussion, immediately conjuring a dreamlike soundscape, which makes way for Cohen’s signature honeyed vocals as she grapples with change along the passage of time. “Mountain,” my personal favourite from the record, summons a more mellowed ethereal state, as gentle strums ripple over the lasting loss of a beloved friend. In its final leg, the track leaps into full flight as Cohen repeats “Hold onto me like you mean it / I won’t let you down / I know you’re free I can feel it / Your feet don’t touch the ground.” “Rag” rings on as one of 2025’s most profoundly written tracks, with Cohen describing the comfort behind the familiarity of an old, dusty rag left behind on the side of the pavement as it marks the passage of time in the opening verse. A tender sentiment most fitting for what, up until this point in the record, has been a graceful reckoning of the quiet heaviness we carry, whether it be the burden of unspoken words, or the longing attached to moments we can’t return to.
Track 6, the lyric-less “Una Spiaggia” serves as a palette cleanser before the definitive shift into the latter half of the LP. Circling back to the prior note about the “spiritual element” woven into the record, this track is the epitome of that remark. Regenerating tides of life take force in the form of twinkling keys and swelling vocal harmonies in this take on Ennio Morricone’s, “Una Spiaggia a Mezzogiorno.” From here, the record continues to look inward, this time in a more intimate fashion as “Summer Sweat” leans into an aching sensuality in a steamy and dreamy haze. Distant, echoey vocals emphasize this longing as groovy guitars enhance its hypnotic spell. Carried by a drifting arrangement, the closing “Dog Years” brings a soft disorientation to the record’s end, suggesting that understanding isn’t always linear, nor necessary with Cohen singing “Everyone knows there’s a lifetime / How do you get there I don’t know / You counted the seasons / Founded by phases or reasons why / Better to measure it in dog years.”
Like the trace of sunlight behind closed eyes, Earthstar Mountain’s resonance lasts beyond its close.
“I heard somebody say
Dusty, Hannah Cohen
“Be as lonely as you wanna be
‘Cause everywhere you go now,
There you are””
Listen to Earthstar Mountain:
Apple Music | Spotify | Bandcamp
Follow Hannah Cohen:
Soundwave Society Music Club 
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