HANNAH SHARES APERTURE WITH THE BAY

Support from Miloe & Lance Redeker primed what became Hannah Jadagu’s stage through and through. She breezed into the city Wednesday night, immediately following her show at the Echo 24 hours prior, to play SF for the first time since Ritt Momney’s 2022 Sunny Boy tour. At just 20 years old, she is cruising through her first headline tour for debut album Aperture with little to no breaks in between cities. Miloe aka Bobby Kabeya (based in Minneapolis) is riding with Hannah through October, whereas Lance grew up and still lives in the area so joined the bill for the evening. 

Jadagu has undoubtedly earned this moment. She’s been recording her own music since early childhood and dropped her first EP What is Going On? in 2021 after honing a SoundCloud audience for some time. Influenced by classical percussionist roots, high school drumline, and her older sister, Hannah landed a contract with Sub Pop Records – the label that brought you Soundgarden, Nirvana, and The Shins – in her senior year of high school. She has opened for indie cornerstones like Beach Fossils, Men I Trust, and Faye Webster, which speaks to her experience and come-up for sure – along with how white this genre is. In supporting fellow trailblazer Arlo Parks last September, and now heading the Aperture tour, Jadagu is taking her well-deserved place amidst up-and-coming Black indie musicians.

Her stage presence is pure, relieving me from a long day at work and school, not to mention the lyrics on her first song of the evening “What You Did.” This track unfolds with satisfyingly thrashing drums which recur on the heels of “I don’t want to talk to you again” x2 but also can be heard during the song’s conclusion: Hannah spends the last 40 seconds of the banger conducting a make-shift call and response. She intones “I know what you did,” followed by the crunchy three-beat blast from the song’s beginning, and this back-and-forth repeats nine times for good measure so by the final go-around you can only assume she has made peace with the situation.

In broad view, Aperture centers making peace through turmoil. Written between graduating high school in Mesquite, Texas and then moving to the East Coast for NYU, this record is wrought with indie rock angst meets empyreal softcore bedroom pop vocals. Track 3 “Six Months” talks moving forward, shifting gears in the wake of what once was – maybe no longer being enough for someone or reaching them too little/too late. Hannah reconciles the irreconcilable on “Warning Sign” as well –  love, loss, and whether or not striving for someone new after heartbreak is worth the risk.

Brick and Mortar’s energy crescendoed through her performance of 2021 single “All My Time Is Wasted,” as Hannah beckoned us forward to join the chorus. She continued with Aperture’s “Scratch the Surface,” rotating guitars throughout and locking eyes with those who knew her lyrics best. Her modest pride in this record is magnetic, especially when it came to track 2 “Say It Now.” As the first song ever written for the album, it’s gone through many different iterations, “but this next form is absolutely its final form,” confirmed Jadagu. She came down into the pit for “Admit It,” fully tapping into the Bay Area pulse from beginning to end of this sonically, cosmically pleasing set. 

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Hannah, thank you for making this record, for oscillating between the fear and thrill of letting yourself love and be loved. Thank you for sharing this aperture with the Bay Wednesday night; we hope to see you again soon.

Article by Nico Chodor

Photos by Leah Johnson