Earthstar Mountain by Hannah Cohen

The Feature Album this week on 2SER is Earthstar Mountain, the fourth studio album from SF-born, now New York-based cosmic soul ascender Hannah Cohen.

Words by Josh Ray

If you take a train Southwest for about two hours from New York City, you might end up in or around a town called Catskill. It’s nestled among a forest-blanketed mountain range (the Catskills Mountains) and follows along from the Hudson River. I hadn’t heard of it until I listened to Earthstar Mountain, the fourth and latest album from American singer-songwriter (and Catskill resident) Hannah Cohen. Press releases and interviews see Cohen make constant reference to Catskill as the central source inspiration for the album, and Cohen’s own social media pages are dotted with images of flowers and flora presumably housed among the mountain range the town resides in. Though the Catskills’ etymology is unclear, some evidence suggests its name is derived from the abundance of mountain lions which once populated the area.

It’s hard to say whether Australia really has its own version of the Catskills. Australia isn’t particularly known for its mountains in size or greenery, and it seems we have more cat-namesake AFL teams than actual native cat species. Our tallest mountain isn’t tall nor lush, and our abundance of possums or wombats doesn’t change the fact that they’re actually just marsupials.

Luckily, Earthstar Mountain is one of those albums that instantly transports you to where the artist was when they recorded it. It sounds like it was recorded in clear air, or perhaps within the confines of a dark-wood cabin atop a huge still lake (the Catskills feel like a place that would have a good lake). This is apparent from the first beat of the drum machine on opener ‘Dusty’, kicking off in the same way you’d expect of the rails of an old steam train as it pulls out of its station. The beat is somewhat reminiscent of the drum machine work on the first two albums from dream pop duo Beach House, both of which were released on Bella Union, the same label that Earthstar Mountain has been distributed on.

That same digital drum makes frequent appearances across the album. While the Catskills are presumably a very lush and natural place, Earthstar Mountain doesn’t shy away from the use of digital instrumentation to convey its pastoral atmosphere. The aforementioned ‘Dusty’ reminds me in this way of Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’ if it were set on that aforementioned steam train making its way across a green ridge. Given the early electronic inspirations, it’s perhaps then no coincidence that Cohen has cited new age jazz artists Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders as further sonic references. In contrast to these artists’ sometimes improvised and unruly nature, you can expect a more gentle use of their influence from Cohen, from reverb-tinged horn sections (see: the back end of ‘Baby You’re Lying’) to slightly off-kilter voice-as-instrument riffage (back end of ‘Dog Years’). Moments like ‘Summer Sweat’, for its complex rhythms and funk guitars, give Earthstar Mountain further sonic depth.

It should be said, amongst Cohen’s raft of influences, that folk is Earthstar Mountain’s stock in trade. ‘Rag’, for example, revels heavily in this influence both lyrically and sonically. The track ‘Mountain’, for it’s shimmering guitars, is straight out of the 60s if Cohen shared contemporaries in The Millenium and The Beach Boys. It features more modern contributions from the likes of Adrianne Lenker and Sufjan Stevens. If there’s a folk era you can name, it probably has its moments on this album.

Earthstar Mountain works so well because its natural context is so apparent in the music, and it just happens that the natural context is a beautiful place. I’ll probably never even see the Catskills, and I’m not going to say that simply because I listened to a really great album that I can immediately disregard the actual natural beauty of the place in real life. But Earthstar Mountain is beautiful, the by-product of an artist who has pulled from a range of beautiful music across genres, time and the world. You should listen to it the next time you’re in a beautiful place.

Earthstar Mountain is out now (vinyl, digital) via Bella Union.