Hannah Georgas

"I put pressure on myself for the last record, but for the most part I'm just trying to get that crap out of my head."

Hannah Georgas sits cross-legged on empty bleachers at a Vancouver baseball diamond. Behind her, an elderly couple sorts bottles in the sunshine. Then a pre-school lets out. Finally a herd of teenage boys runs past. The ridiculous distractions somehow make it easier to have a candid conversation about anxiety and love, and how the two influenced Georgas' fantastic, self-titled, second album.

Her first anxiety attack was in university. "My mom even said when I was a little kid that I was always a worrier," she laughs. Fans saw her channel that fretting into her debut, 2010's This is Good, which detailed romantic dramas and heartache ? despite the fact that she was officially single until just last year. On Hannah Georgas, she's writing about and for herself, which is perhaps why no other title seemed to work, despite endless brainstorming.

"I'm better at myself, now," she says. "More confident. When you're like that, you can let people in more and have better relationships." The life changes manifested subtly but distinctively on the new record. While more contemplative and pensive, lyrically, the album's actually more upbeat thanks to an influx of electronica to bolster the singer/songwriter vibe.

"I thought hard about what kind of music I really like, and what makes me want to listen to a song over and over," Georgas says. "One of my favourites is 'Make Love' by Daft Punk. It's just the same chords over and over and over, and the lyric is 'make love.'" She laughs. "I could walk around all day just letting that be my theme song. I just wanted to get closer to that feeling and make music that rings true to that." - Exclaim!

Vancouver based singer/songwriter Hannah Georgas goes deeper into the machinery for her new self-titled effort, following up 2010’s This Is Good. A stint earlier this year opening for Kathleen Edwards, and being in her road band, helped expand Georgas’ horizons.
She partnered with Graham Walsh, (Holy Fuck), to integrate a synth-based overlay on her folk template, evident immediately on opening track “Elephant,” and shown to its best effect on “Enemies” and “What You Do To Me.”
The album is stuffed with catchy pop numbers, but makes its deepest impression when she falls back on the confessional songwriting that is her forte. “Ode To Mom” works through pain in the verses to hit a soaring redemptive chorus. It’s the track that will stick with you.

Hannah Georgas is on the road in the States this fall supporting Husky, hitting San Francisco for a date at the Cafe´ Du Nord on October 30th, followed by the Satellite in Los Angeles on November 2nd. - Owl Mag

What you do to me
DiSC of the WEEK: Hannah Georgas, Hannah Georgas

I’ve always had an affinity for self titled albums that were not the artist’s debut. Think Carpenters, Blur, Echo & The Bunnymen, Love and Rockets, Fleetwood Mac. In their own way, these records are all statements of intent from their creators, in some cases landmark records that encapsulate the quintessential qualities of the artists. A self-titled debut makes a splash, but often are scattershot collections of already released singles; they just don’t have the same sense of self-knowledge and understanding as those later career eponymous discs do.

Maybe that just my interpretation, but my hypothesis certainly rings true on Hannah Georgas, album number two from the fiery-haired Vancouver singer songwriter who made the nation stand and take notice with her debut This is Good. This time out, Hannah Georgas and producer Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck have taken her compositions (written primarily on piano) and fleshed them out with electronic sounds, processed beats, and layers of squelchy synth sounds. The songs still pop like those of her debut, but there’s also a fair bit of snap and crackle thrown in for good measure. “Millions” is the bridge across her previous guitar based sarcasm and the more earnest electro-pop of its nine companion tracks. Georgas has said that much of this record is based on programmed drums and synths, but there’s a healthy dose of live playing over top, adding that elusive human quality that electronic music sometimes misses.

“Enemies”, like the rest of the record, smoulders like a slow burning fire. It never boils over, though. Instead, the tension and restraint hold the songs back like an angry dog on a leash. While her voice is sugary sweet, her lyrics and delivery can be as tart as lemons (see “Somebody”). She’s the consumate collaborator, inviting rapper Shad to sing with her on the album’s superb closing track “Waiting Game”, pulling members of Wintersleep and Mother Mother into the studio to play with her, giving them the freedom to explore corridors in her songs she may not have otherwise gone down.

There’s a subtlety to Hannah Georgas that I find attractive. It’s not bombastic or in-your-face, but it will get in your head, under your skin, and into your soul if you let it. I highly suggest you drop your guard and surrender.

Hannah Georgas, my first ever DiSC of the WEEK selection, is out on Dine Alone Records, Tuesday October 2, 2012. - Quick Before It Melts

You’ll be rooting for Hannah Georgas on her new self-titled release.

The Canadian singer-songwriter will remind listeners of some of their hard-luck friends, a gal who is too tender, funny, smart and playful to be single, but too messed up in the head to be in the uncomplicated relationship she seeks.

And as “Hannah Georgas” plays out, you’ll likely feel empathy for the Ontario-born, British Columbia-based performer, and you’ll also likely be charmed by her synthetic, New Wave sound, her clear vocals and her irresistible choruses.

Georgas opens her heart right out of the gate, her vulnerable voice emerging from the electronic pulse of first track “Elephant” with, “Is there any love left for me?” before the song picks up momentum. On the subsequent “Somebody,” Georgas seeks a sad little measure of revenge on the object of her affection (whom she obsesses over with, “Every time you walk away, I’m kicking myself”), latching on to the gentle rhythm with the sweet-sounding/mean-spirited refrain, “I just hope that someday, somebody’s gonna break your heart.”

Fortunately, the singer isn’t merely a relationship-consumed woman who defines herself by her romantic partners, and she and producer Graham Walsh sink their sharp hooks into other material. Georgas is comparatively manic on the whimsical “Millions,” for example, seeing herself as worthy of being a millionaire as anyone, and there’s a downcast glow in the softly sweeping “Robotic,” where she pines for a disconnection from her heart: “I wanna be reprogrammed, I wanna be robotic.”

The contrast doesn’t get any clearer than the dreamy and bittersweet “Ode to Mom” (“If there is magic on this planet ... It’s in my blood”) versus the hilarious, tongue-in-cheek “Shortie,” where the singer tosses out her brain cells to channel a superficial dance diva. ("I’m gonna dance dance dance until the cops come”).

Still, she circles back around to the confessional self-analysis closer “Waiting Game,” where shimmer and strum support Georgas as she sings, “My heart is always ready to quit ... It gets so hard, I get so hard on myself ... I’m just a sucker waiting for your call.”

Yeah, that call’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. ...

Rating: 4 stars (out of five)

Get Copyright Permissions © 2012, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. - Knoxville News Sentinal

Hannah Georgas’ third, self-titled, release is the perfect balance of electronic sounds, synths, acoustic instruments and the thing that makes Hannah stand above the rest, her impeccable voice. MSN caught up with Hannah at The Rivoli in Toronto before her invite-only CD release show to discuss songwriting, her indie all star band on the disc and, to most importantly, delve deep, to go track-by-track of this tremendous record.
You self-titled the record. Does that signify some kind of rebirth?
I thought it would be neat to just self-title it because I feel like it’s a fresh re-introduction to what I’ve been up to, and where I‘m at creatively and musically. I took a little break and came back, and it was an appropriate time.
Appropriate too that you made the record here, on this side of the country.
Yeah. I rented an apartment over on the Westside in Parkdale [in Toronto] for three months. We just got to work. We did the bed tracks in this place called Stoney Creek. It’s just a little bit further out from Hamilton. We worked for just over a week there. Then the rest of the overdubs were done at Graham Walsh’s place, just in his house.
The band on the disc is an interesting mix of Canadian indie rock superstars. Were these just friends you’ve made over the years?
Loel Campbell who played drums on the record is friends with Graham, and he also used to play in Holy F*ck. Then Tim D’eon also plays in Wintersleep who is just friends with Loel, obviously.
Mother Mother’s Ryan Guldemond’s has been playing with you for a while.
Yeah, he doesn’t play in my band all of the time. Whenever he’s free, and he can, he definitely does. I had the Wintersleep boys. Ryan, he did some work with me. Joel [Stouffer] actually, who played drums on two of the songs, he plays in Dragonette, also friends with Graham. Then the rest of it was Graham and I. Shad came out and sang on a song.
Where’s he?
He sings on “The Waiting Game.” It’s like a really low vocal part.
So these were all Graham’s friends then, or did you know any of these guys before? Did you just trust Graham to bring you a band?
I just trusted Graham. I put my faith in Graham. Just putting my faith in Graham as a producer too, being a fan of Holy F*ck. Definitely the direction that I wanted to head. I thought he would be a really awesome mix of what I do, so I just kind of went for it. Obviously people saying his praises, and said wonderful things about Graham and Graham said wonderful things about Wintersleep. I heard through the grapevine that Loel is known to be the best drummer in Canada. So I’m like, “Sweet. Score!” And he’s a wonderful human being. Ryan, obviously produced my last record, so I really wanted him to be a part of it in some way. It just kind of all worked out.
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????????We’ll go track-by-track in a minute but I’m curious as to where these songs start, because they’re very synth and drum machine driven as opposed to acoustic guitar.
Well, January of last year, I had two songs in the bag and I was like, “I really want to make a record. I feel like I’m ready for this.” I made a conscious decision to sit at my piano every day in my apartment and write from January to August. I used Garageband and demoed a lot, and made little beats. It’s like a far cry from anything amazing. But definitely a different approach that I took to this record, as opposed to the last one. The last record, I went into a studio and just played on my guitar, and was like, “Record. Finished. Here’s my demo, Ryan. Do what you want with it.” But with this, I wanted to create a vibe more for Graham to let him know kind of the direction I wanted to go with it.
Where do you write? Do you have a room that your write?
For this, I have an apartment... my own apartment in Vancouver. And I just write in my living room.
Do you need to be alone, or can there be other people around?
I need to be alone. I also, to kind of start to trigger everything and get the ball rolling, I rented a cabin on Salt Spring Island. That place had no Internet connection or phone connection. Just me, Garageband, and my keyboard. That kind of sparked everything to come. It was just so helpful to be alone and not have any interruptions or distractions at all. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It was in January. Dead of winter. I had the most sweet cabin ever. It was so pimp. And it was so cheap, because it was the dead season. It was pouring rain out there, but I would do anything to do it again.
Did touring with Kathleen Edwards influence the record at all?
Well, I met Kathleen after I was done everything.
So, it’s been finished for a while then.
Yeah, I finished the record in... so I started it last October, and finished tracking mid-November. Her and I met for breakfast while I was making the record. Then we started touring together well after it was done. But she’s influenced me in other ways.
How so?
Just watching her play show and how she deals with her team. It’s rea - Msn.com

If Hannah Georgas doesn't steal your heart with the first track of her new pop album, This Is Good, she will by the second.
"I'm just your lovesick fool," she warbles on Lovesick, slipping an octave or two as she frets about her futile predicament.
In those five seconds, you'll be hooked. You'll swoon over her vocals and your pulse will start to pitter-patter with your own memories and mixed emotions of unrequited love--joy, expectation and, ultimately, crushing dis- appointment.
"You've got that look in your eye that'd fool anyone, and gets me going anytime / I keep searching for the one that I adore," she continues. "C'mon, give me so much more!"
Unlike the object of her affection, the Vancouver songstress and haunting voice behind Walmart's You've Got a Place Called Home jingle won't make you feel like a fool.
Her first EP, The Beat Stuff, was a winsome collection, earning Georgas a prestigious Canada Day gig on Parliament Hill, opening slots for Said The Whale and City and Colour, not to mention her Walmart commercial and status as Canada's next Feist.
This Is Good, produced by Howard Redekopp and Mother Mother's Ryan Guldemond, fulfills her promise. The 11-track album is filled with easy-to-love tunes about boys, beats, and breakdowns in communication- -from the electro-pop bubbliness of Bang Bang You're Dead to the rootsy shuffle of The Deep End to the sweeping strings of Thick Skin.
Her voice, of course, is the real star of This Is Good. She possesses those aching pipes that seem to be a prerequisite of Canada's most successful fe- male vocalists--Feist, Sarah McLachlan, Sarah Harmer, Kathleen Edwards- -yet Georgas is able to give us so much more range. She can sound like a wounded bird, a defiant rocker or a sassy Karen O dance-punk, but she al- ways makes you feel like one of her most trusted confidantes.
She's singing for you, not at you. - NATIONAL POST / April 27, 2010 / * ALSO RAN ED JOURNAL AND ON CANADA.COM

"It's a really great feeling to know people want to hear my opinion and my advice on music. It's an honour," Hannah Georgas says demurely, detailing her current position as a mentor and expert in a local music program. "It's amazing to sit on the other end and be like, 'Wow, I did this songwriting competition like a year ago.' It's pretty fucking sweet."
Georgas is grinning like a kid who's just won her grade-two spelling bee. For a fledgling artist with only a six-song EP to her name, the 26-year-old still can't believe how far she's come. As Georgas sips her Americano, bashfully noting how she's morphed into a singing-songwriting wizard in the eyes of her Vancouver-based counterparts, her caution slowly turns to pride. And who can blame her? After all, she's got musical stats that could sucker punch much more "established" Canadian indie bands.
Since deciding to seriously pursue music three years ago, her resume has exploded, chock-full of television song placements, a Taylor Swift shout-out and a Wal-Mart commercial commission. Between her EP The Beat Stuff and this month's debut full-length This Is Good, Georgas's songs have been heard on shows like Heroes, Degrassi–The Next Generation, Flashpoint and Peak Season. She won the 2009 CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for "Best New Artist." Starbucks has licensed "The Beat Stuff" to play in its North American stores. And love-struck critics everywhere are crowning her the next Feist.
In short, she's managed to become one of the most successful Canadian musicians you've probably never heard of.
It won't be long before Georgas becomes a household name. Even as I sit across from the fiery-haired singer-songwriter at Vancouver's Our Town Cafe´, a local booking manager spots her, not just tucked in the corner but hidden be- hind an oversized pillar that also serves as a rambunctious air vent. Later that night at an overcrowded Jason Collett/Zeus/Bahamas show, a friend points out a black hooded figure standing in the shadows: "Oh, there's Hannah Georgas."
For those who have kept tabs on her, we can agree the talented songstress has had a meteoric rise in exposure and acclaim with very little back catalogue. She didn't get in on sparkle or image; she's doing it all on good tunes. A quick-witted and warm conversationalist, Georgas isn't just a new artist glid- ing on good luck, but someone wholly devoted to unembellished melodies.
"I write because it's an honest thing," Georgas says about her process. "I get inspired to write when I'm feeling something and that's what comes out. There's honesty in my music. Music that inspires me is music that I can emotionally connect to. Not even just the lyrics, but the feeling of the song itself. Whenever I feel like I just want to fist pump a song" — Georgas bites her lower lip and jabs the air above her — "that's what inspires me. When I hear a song and am like, 'Ohhh yeah,' that's the music I try to make so people can have that same connection. So hopefully I'm doing something like that. Fist-pumping music."
Although "Bang Bang You're Dead" — with its adorable pre-pubescent gang vocals and upbeat, 8-bit intro — is the first single off of This Is Good, "Thick Skin" is the first video from the album. Directed and inspired by Sean Wainsteim (Wintersleep, Tokyo Police Club, Born Ruffians), the video was released in January, and features Georgas completely naked, crawling through mud and tunnels. The video involved 300 takes, bruised knees and mud in crevices she didn't know existed, but according to Georgas, it was well worth the mess. Some may question her motivation for producing such a racy piece as easy publicity, but she maintains Wainsteim's vision worked to define her as more than just a singer-songwriter in a sea of them.
"I think it was a really cool way of introducing me — like, 'okay, here's Hannah Georgas!'" she exclaims. "It was kind of ballsy. I just wanted it to show the rawness to who I am. It's all of me, in this video, and it's a very hon- est way of showing who I am. Some of the responses [to the video] were like 'Hot! Sexy video' but it's not intended to be that at all. It's a progression to my other songs, different from what people have heard before, and takes this interesting route where there's a little bit more to Hannah than just these folk songs. There's something darker."
Despite her obvious talent and daring disposition, Georgas was once reluc- tant to embrace music as a career. She had the love, but never felt she could make a go of an iffy profession that wouldn't necessarily (and likely would not) end in a comfortable lifestyle and a white picket fence. "I was always battling it," Georgas confesses. "Since I was five I've known I'd love to play music, but never really felt I could just put it out there. It was in the back of my mind that my parents don't agree with what I'm doing. My dad was super passionate about music, but he chose the road of raising a family and just wanted us to, no matter wha - EXCLAIM!

She’s up for New Artist of the Year at the 2011 Juno Awards, but it’s Hannah Georgas’ other nomination, for Songwriter of the Year, that comes up first when she calls.

“It’s a huge honour, and songwriting, for me, is key,” Georgas says. “It’s a huge part of who I am and I take that really seriously. I’ve been writing songs since I was little.

“Like, six little.”

Who hasn’t played make-believe rock star at some point, though? Give a kid a keyboard, and they’ll bang on it -- without going on to release an album (2010’s This is Good), collect some trophies (a Verge Award, an Indie, a CBC Radio 3 Bucky) and have critics, and Taylor Swift, breathlessly swooning over their dulcet pop-rock.

Georgas, though -- she says she was hooked on songwriting by an early age. OK -- maybe her compositions at six weren’t serious, but the feeling she got plunking at the keys definitely was.

“My mom put me in piano lessons when I was five, so as soon as I figured that out, I was singing and beginning to write my own songs,” says Georgas, who was raised in the Toronto suburbs. (She’s called Vancouver home since launching her solo music career in the latter half of the 2000s.) “I guess I was serious in the sense it made me feel empowered and excited. And that’s how I feel, even now, every time I finish a song or writing a song. There’s no other feeling like it. … And when you have a song that just comes to you out of nowhere and it takes an hour or whatever to write, that’s just the most amazing feeling in the world.”

In the songwriting category, three of the compositions off Georgas’ April 2010 debut This is Good are being honoured. There’s the album opener, “Chit Chat” -- a jittering pop-rock jam that sees the 20-something chewing out a conversation-hogging pal while also showcasing her vocals; marble-mouthed and cooing at the outset, she’s lashing out with a rock-chick snarl by the end. Also included is the jangling but contemplative “The Deep End.” And then there’s the lilting “Lover’s Breakdown,” the song Georgas says was quickest to write -- or, rather, the one that most seemed to come out of nowhere.
“For ‘Lovers Breakdown’ I was in this relationship and we were breaking up every other week and getting back together,” Georgas says of the song’s origin story. “It was at that one rocky point in the relationship, and the song just poured out of me.

“I remember just crying while I was writing it, and it just came pouring out of my heart, and it came so fast,” she enthuses, explaining that she captured the song the same way she writes most of her work: at home, alone, on an acoustic guitar.

The album recording of the song captures a relatively restrained Georgas -- more wistful than weepy, as she sings about how she can’t help “crawling back” to the object of her affection.

“All of my songs are very personal songs for me, and are about something that’s affected me in my life,” she says. And while they might be out there for anyone to hear, the singer-songwriter says she doesn’t go out of her way to share her songs with the people who inspired them. She made an exception, though, for the guy behind “Lovers Breakdown.”

“With that particular person, yeah, I did. It was pretty funny,” she says with a peal of giggles. “Like I said, that was just a funny relationship. We broke up and got back together again all the time, and it was so dramatic and crazy. We were back together, and I played him the new song,” she says.

His response? “He was like, ‘Is everything OK?’

“And I was like, ‘Yeah, uh, no!’ Obviously not,” she laughs.

And obviously they’re not together any longer.

Georgas has been spilling other experiences into songs these days -- though she expects it won’t be until sometime in 2012 that fans hear anything of what she’s been going through. Following her commitments for Toronto’s Juno Week -- which include appearances at a free Juno Block Party concert March 24 with City and Colour and Shad and a March 26 performance with fellow New Artist of the Year nominee Meaghan Smith -- she says she plans to finish the process of writing and demo-ing she’s already begun, with the aim to enter the studio by the fall.

“It’s still in its baby stages,” says Georgas of This is Good’s follow-up. That said, there is one aspect of her next album she’s ready to reveal. “In terms of the production, I’m thinking of going in a bit of a different way, having a little more electronic elements to it -- electronic-y, dirty sounds.”

This is Good album track, “Dancefloor” had Georgas playing with a brash, disco-rock palette, and she says that her trajectory for album No. 2 is “kind of in that realm.”
“I’m really into electronic stuff and ‘90s and ‘80s music a lot, it’s just always influenced me,” she says of her points of inspiration. “[The album] is not as hardcore as ‘Dancefloor,’ but there’s going to be some elements of that, for sure.”

Hannah Georgas is nominated for New Artist of the Year and Songwr - Dose.ca - Canwest

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of seeing one of my absolute favorite artists -- the exceptionally talented and wonderfully down-to-earth Sara Bareilles -- in concert during her Little Black Dress Tour. I have loved Sara from the start, and I had always wanted to see her perform love, but never had the chance.

Before the show, I listened to one of the opening acts for a moment, and I remember thinking what I heard was pretty good, though I couldn't recall a song title, specific lyric, or really make any comparisons. So, what I'm saying is that I enjoyed what was happening in the background while I focused on something else. That is how I -- and certainly plenty of others -- "listen" to a lot of the music I hear these days, as there is simply too much to do and too much music. Too much of everything, and not enough time.

I arrived to the show and enjoyed the first act, who I thought was nice enough, and then the second opener came on. Her name is Hannah Georgas, and she was the one I vaguely remember enjoying at some prior moment on my computer. I settled in, and the performance I saw next went above and beyond my expectations. Turns out that while I was just discovering her for the first time, Hannah was no newcomer to the field.

Hannah Georgas is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has quietly built a devoted following, and endeared herself to critics across the country. Since her debut album was released in 2009, she has continually released some of the most heartfelt, well-produced female-fronted instrumental pop out there. Her last effort, a self-titled album, is my personal favorite. It mixes indie cool ("Millions," which was featured on an episode of the show Girls), adorable, simple pop melodies ("Enemies"), and Feist-like delicate vocals throughout. The album earned her nods for Songwriter of the Year and Best Alternative Album at the 2013 Juno Awards, and has earned her at least one new fan.

Listening to her albums -- and I mean actually listening -- will give you a good idea of the phenomenal and underrated pop music Hannah is making, similar to Sara. Both are subtle, unassuming women with exceptionally powerful voices, both literally and in what they are saying and how they phrase it. Working your way through their discographies (which you're sure to do more than once) is a pleasure, but once you've done so, I thoroughly encourage you to see them live. The only thing that could have possibly made Hannah's show better for me would have been if I'd spent more time replaying and learned all the words so I could sing along. - Huffington Post

Hannah Georgas began her career acoustic guitar in hand, playing the Vancouver folk scene. Nowadays you’d be more likely to hear the British Columbia native experimenting with a synthesizer than strumming a folksy ballad. But underneath the electroncia, Georgas insists she still retains the essential qualities of a singer-songwriter – in particular, an emotional connection to her material.

“There are a lot of times where I’ve felt quite vulnerable and anxious, and I get frustrated with feeling sensitive and wish I wouldn’t have to think so hard about the fact that I think so hard all the time,” she said. “Maybe I wouldn’t be a musician, though, if I was like that.”

Although her self-titled sophomore album was released in 2012, it’s come back into the spotlight after the upbeat, millennial anthem “Millions” was featured on an episode of the hit HBO series Girls this February. Other tracks from the LP include the angry heartbreak of “Somebody”, the sugary, party-all-night dance track “Shortie” and the dreamy “Elephant.” - American Songwriter

Playing the Greek Theater towards the end of her run in support of Sara Bareilles’ Little Black Dress Tour, Canadian singer/songwriter Hannah Georgas took a phone interview with The Daily Cal to talk about her musical influences, life on the road and the most memorable shows of the tour.



Daily Californian: You’re coming to the tail end of this tour with Sara Bareilles. How has that been going?

Hannah Georgas: It’s been absolutely wonderful. I’ve had a great run. We played all through the U.S. and had great shows, and [Sara Bareilles] has got an awesome fanbase and I feel like it’s just been really receptive for me. Everybody on her team is so great so it’s just been a really positive experience for myself and my band. It’s been awesome.



DC: How has Sara’s fanbase been taking to your music every night?

HG: Oh, it’s been incredible! I feel like her fans have been super receptive and I go out after the show to kind of say hello to everybody and walk around, and I find that I feel like I’m being embraced. It couldn’t make you feel any better to just go out and feel like people are enjoying the music.



DC: For people who aren’t familiar with your music style, how would you describe your music?

HG: I say that it’s pop with a little bit of alternative. I’m a singer/songwriter and there’s a little bit of an electronic influence.



DC: And who would you cite as some of your influences:

HG: That ranges from a pretty broad spectrum, but I love a lot of hip hop, I love R&B, I love pop music, folk — artists like Sade, Annie Lennox, from A Tribe Called Quest to Michael Jackson. I’m really into songwriting and pop music.



DC: You’ve been touring in support of your self-titled album for about two years now. Are you working on anything new or focusing on getting yourself out on the road?

HG: I’m trying to write right now, but I’ve just been so busy with promoting this record and being on the road. So I’ve been trying to strike that balance at home to do writing … My brain is on the writing path right now. This Sara Bareilles tour is the bookend to this record that I’ve been promoting, so it’s a nice way to end it all.



DC: Do you find it easier or harder to write on the road?

HG: I find it impossible to write on the road (laughs). It’s really hard. I think for what I need, I need to be kind of isolated and alone and have quiet in my brain. The opportunity to just have everything at my fingertips, like all my instruments. I find that on tour it’s not an easy endeavor for me. I’m around people all the time and thinking of other things or thinking about the show or getting to the next place … I’ve tried, but I guess every scenario is different when you’re on the road, like how much time in between shows you have, how much traveling you have, how much space you have. But for me, I’ve never had that inspiration to write on the road.



DC: Do you have a most memorable show from this tour?

HG: We did two nights at Madison Square Garden. When I walked off stage the first night, I’m like, “Okay, I’m ready to go do that again and really kill it.” So the second night, there was just this energy on stage that was … different than the first night. Not that the first night was bad, but I had this energy that was coming across differently and it felt really good on stage and it felt really receptive in the crowd.

Hannah Georgas is opening for Sara Bareilles tonight at the Greek Theater. Tickets are still on-sale. - Daily Californian

Recorded with Graham Walsh of Holy F***, this Vancouver-based singer’s second album eschews the acoustic soundscapes and lyrical toughness of her debut for monochromatic electronica. It provides hauntingly contrasting settings for Georgas’s Feist-like caress of a voice and darkly vulnerable lyrics. It’s by no means all about fragility: Shortie is a defiant (though inescapably bleak) narrative about the search for romance, set to a bombastic stomp of a pop tune. More typical, though, are the muffled and melancholic sonics of Enemies and the equally fearful Elephant, on which Walsh places Georgas’s voice upfront and exposed, and beneath which he places a throbbing, unsettling keyboard, before the song jumps off the cliff into a doom-laden chorus. Somebody’s vocal is almost a sigh, before Georgas bares her teeth as she sings: “I just hope that, someday, somebody’s going to break your heart.” - The Sunday Times

Hannah Georgas's synth-tinged rock has won international acclaim.

Who is she?
Hannah Georgas is a singer-songwriter from Vancouver, who has won international acclaim for her second, self-titled album. Her track Millions, which blends clever, heartfelt lyrics with dark pop synths, was one of the musical highlights of the latest season of cult HBO show Girls.
How did she get here?
Originally from Ontario, Georgas, 30, says she was “writing songs from a ridiculously young age”, and spent her adolescence playing in pop and punk band. She moved to Victoria, British Columbia for university, but admits: “I really wanted to focus all of my energy and attention on my music – do it on my own, do it 100 per cent, and not work five jobs or attend university”. She recorded several demos and released her first EP, The Beat Stuff, in 2009. Her debut album, This Is Good, followed in 2010, and was longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize (Canada’s answer to the Mercury Prize). Hannah Georgas was released in 2012, and the singer has since toured Europe with fellow Canadian City and Colour.

What does she sound like?
Georgas’s early output evokes the idiosyncratic indie of Feist, and packs the raw, emotive lyrical punch of Regina Spektor. Her second album was recorded with Graham Walsh, a member of Canadian electronica band Holy F---, and adds a danceable, keyboard-driven edge to her pop-rock sound, placing her music somewhere between Haim and CSS.
Who are her influences?
A daughter of a professional blues pianist, Georgas was surrounded by music from infancy. Her big sisters’ hip-hop and house music records nurtured her love of pop, but it was “seeing this wave of female musicians like Sade, Annie Lennox to Janet Jackson” that most inspired her to become a musician.
What does she say about her music?
“I guess it’s always been true to what I want to listen to."

Hannah Georgas will play the Great Escape in Brighton on May 8-10. - The Telegraph