Lebanon Hanover – Why Not Just Be Solo

The album opens with the Saddest Smile whose minimal guitar is overlaid with a lamentational vocal. It is a pensive, introspective exploration of disenchantment, isolation, and the self-hatred projected on others that sets the tone for the rest of the record. A Very Good Life proceeds with a crunchy snare, and plodding bass that leads into Larissa Iceglass’s melancholic vocal style, already evolved in both production and range highlighted by a haunting echo, and spectral effects, lyrically continuing the theme of loathing and projection explored in the previous track. The word Albatross is often used as a metaphor for a curse-like psychological burden. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Here in a song propelled forward with strumming guitar, bass, and scratchy backing percussion, icy vocals, and introspective pauses, Larissa Iceglass grapples with the warring between two internal factions: the head and the heart. I’m A Reject changes it up with a more upbeat tempo, bigger sound, and almost tribal melody, sculpting a mood that’s heavy on the echoey distortion. Sounding like she’s singing in a mausoleum, Iceglass’s rich vocals wryly recount an anthem of pale faces laughing at banality as they triumphantly wear black and haunt cemeteries. Cadaverously Quaint opens with a very unsettling synth staccato rhythm that launches into early-80s snare infused dance track, evoking the early years of Mute and Some Bizzare. Maybelline’s blood-curdling vocal is both ghostly and vampiric in its own almost indecipherable language.The song’s nightmarish, howling wind effects add to the overarching atmosphere of what it might be like if Mary Shelly were to merge the myths of both Pygmalion and her Modern Prometheus. Bring Your Own Wine opens with a marching drumline leading into a classic guitar post-punk guitar riff, overlaid with Iceglass growling and purring her disgust toward humanity both inward and outward.

2 A Very Good Life
A3 Albatross
A4 I’m A Reject
A5 Cadaverously Quaint
A6 Bring Your Own Wine
B1 Northern Lights
B2 No One Holds Hands
B3 Why Not Just Be Normal
B4 Somehow We’ll Get Through This
B5 Avalanche