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May 06, 2024 Web Exclusive By Caleb Campbell

There is a certain rose-colored magic imparted upon adolescence by those who’ve left it behind. The days of youth are meant to be the best of your life, the days you will look back on and treasure long after they’ve faded into the rearview. As the old adage goes, “youth is wasted on the young.” Yet, all these platitudes seem to result in is a weight hovering over your head, a reminder that you could be doing more, seeing more, making more, all while you don’t have the time, money, or energy to do any of the above.

Seemingly, such concerns should not apply to Hana Vu. If there’s anybody who has made the most of their youth, it is her. She was touring around LA at 14, self-released her debut EP in 2018, and released her debut album, Public Storage, in 2021, turning heads with a fuzzy and fractured collection of indie rock. Almost three years later, she’s back with her new sophomore album, Romanticism, and she’s wondering what she’s made of herself. Romanticism represents a searching and existential turn for Vu, yet, it is not a quiet or insular listen. As she describes, the record seeks to “succinctly crystallize how it feels to be young, but also to be deeply sad.”

Unsurprisingly, Romanticism is all about big questions and bigger emotions, following Hana Vu as she unravels knotted themes of aging, purpose, and heartache. When you’re young, love and loss can feel like the sum total of all that matters in your world. Rather than downplay those feelings, Vu amplifies them, wrenching melodrama from her diaristic lyrics and impassioned vocal performances. The opener, “Look Alive,” brings that dramatic impulse to the fore from the record’s first moments. Vu sings, backed by a grand rising tide of strings, synths, and arpeggiated keys: “There’s no song in my heart / Like I thought there was / When I was young and I fell apart / There’s no air in my lungs / ‘Cause my breath has changed / And now I’m a ghost of who I have been.”

On more than one occasion, Vu refers to her youth in the past tense. There’s an almost playful element to these moments, as Vu is undoubtedly self-aware enough to realize the humor in confessing “I’m just getting old / I’m just 22.” But, for as silly as the idea of getting old at 22 may seem, it nonetheless reflects a very real feeling, especially for someone coming of age in the era of COVID, global unrest, and climate collapse. There’s little opportunity to be young and naive as you watch your future being robbed in front of you.

Much of the record is about Vu navigating these feelings, searching for meaning in the shifting maze of young adulthood. One of the more poignant lyrics comes as Vu asks on “Airplane,” “Do you remember getting older? / Can you tell me what it’s about? / And at the end of endless summer / Got no plans to hang around / Change the song I think I’ve heard it before / And I don’t feel the same as I did when it’s over.” Over the course of the record, Vu finds herself in a transient, liminal state. All around her people change, romances fade, and the things that once brought joy don’t light up her life in the same way. These feelings all coalesce into very human portraits of grief, worry, and heartache, traced with an unadorned confessional edge: “And I’m just so afraid of ending up / All alone / Again / And I don’t know how I ought to be / But I don’t want to be alone.”

However, while most of the album comes steeped in uncertain musings, it rarely feels dour. In fact, more than any of her previous releases, Romanticism is loaded with hooks and vibrant energy, finding Vu evolving into a sleek, fizzy, and propulsive style of indie rock, touching on grunge, folk, and synth pop along the way. The resulting record comes laced with strident and anthemic moments—the shimmering synth tones of “Play,” the towering layered vocals on “Dreams,” and the muscular, crashing instrumentation on “Find Me Under Wilted Trees.” Vocally, Vu sounds confident and self-assured even as she is exploring feelings of overwhelming uncertainty, confessing that “I’ll hold a love until it turns to dust” on “How It Goes.”

What Romanticism does best is gather all of Hana Vu’s feelings in a dizzying rush of excitement, beauty, and tragedy. The results play on the traditional definition of the word; like the 19th-century artistic movement, Romanticism is guided primarily by intuition, passion, and emotion, now filtered through a distinctly Gen-Z experience. Even if the record’s themes or lyrics play as a touch dramatic, Vu makes it easy to get swept up in the melodrama of each ascendant harmony and pounding guitar chord, seizing on the time when each swirl of emotion felt new and potent. (www.hanavu.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10