Love like religion: A Dollface album review

Hana Bryanne released her debut album titled Dollface on September 15, 2023, at twenty years old. It was written entirely by Bryanne and produced by Carter Jahn and Maxwell Bienert. Its namesake derives from the casual and uncomfortable pet name, and is colored in the patronizing inferiority that Bryanne experienced as a service worker and receptionist. It stands for the smallness and resilience of girlhood, demonstrating what bleeds into the fabric of great women. The album is an illumination of the horrors and triumphs over sexual violence, suicide, queerness, deteriorating relationships, dying relatives, growing up and breaking down, the dark crevices of the world sometimes only found in the depths of 2014 Tumblr, and between the threads of gloves sitting stale in underwear drawers. To me, this album embodies warm breath and chapped lips, dissolving and stinging as they clash with harsh winter air. It is the jubilee of prevailing through the snow with optimism strapped to your shoulders, even after the weather picks up into a violent snowstorm. Bryanne is an American singer-songwriter from California with experience at the NYU Music Program, giving her exposure to the jarring shock that the East Coast cold season invokes on a “Golden State” heart. She feels old fashioned and modern all at once; carrying around disdain for the seeping poison of social media whilst simultaneously utilizing this technology, writing musings from her online platform called the only living girl on the internet to publish essays, poetry, social critique, and other thoughts of whimsy. Subjectively, while Bryanne is a talented musician and guitarist, to me, she is, first and foremost, a writer. It is more fit to envision her with a long feathered quill and haphazard parchment in a rose garden somewhere than the presumable reality of a hard bedroom floor and adorned laptop. She is a true writer, essayist, poet, and lyricist, intertwining all of her projects and songs together, able to reference experiences and feelings at ease. This is an ability that makes her songwriting feel uniquely whole, like a sought after totality. Her choruses twist and interchange, her verses foreshadow and synchronously remind you of the past. Dollface was forged in the way that albums were supposed to be made. It’s a story, a timepiece, a fragment of a person. In the most stereotypical way, it was made for every pair of Doc Martens trudging in the rain, water slipping through tired hands onto too tightly tied laces. Sensitive and raw, as if you fussed over it too much it could be scared away. Critics, enthusiasts, and misanthropes could compare the product of her music to Phoebe Bridgers and Joni Mitchell–they could compare her simple, yet poignant lyrics to Tracy Chapman. I am here to tell you that they would be wrong. She is something else entirely–she is a figment of her own power. Bryann’s 2020 EP, Holy Ground, produced by Bird Street Records, was what planted this seed of this fever stricken creativity. I heard this unpolished bundle of songs all those years ago and was immediately eager for more. Holy Ground obtains a youthfulness and naivety that successful musicians often chase later in their career, but will never seem to formulate as gracefully. As her music was dragged through the depths of quarantine and TikTok monopolization, I knew that it spanned beyond those superficial constrictions and honed a longevity and room of one’s own. 

Hana Bryanne, Bandcamp

It is a peculiar and funny thing to grow alongside music. I have listened to Hana Bryanne as the many people I have been, grown out of, and grown into. I listened to Holy Ground as a 17 year old uncertain girl aimlessly completing online school in my childhood bed during the pandemic, an ode to a time of meandering through my neighborhood with a mask. I now listen to Dollface, 465 miles away from that childhood home, as a 20 year old sophomore in college. I meander in similar ways with a little more sureness, listening to the blossomed versions of Bryanne’s first EP that are the 12 tracks on Dollface. I feel that this album speaks on that same recycled, but ever important feeling: the serrated goodbye to innocence. Like Sylvia Plath’s dead, cold, fermented blood dripping and slinking through bathroom tiles; like spouts of new growth protruding against all odds in the cracks of the sidewalk. Hopping and avoiding the plants with vim because “We’ve got a good thing going// Wearing holes in all our shoes.” (“Klepto,” Single)

“Doing the Play” opens and fills you with an atmospheric despondency. It describes the bitter detachment of the scene of a CVS worker refusing to sell razors. Throughout the album, Bryanne masters the delicate craft of showing in order to tell. She keeps herself at a distance, almost like she is a perpetual stranger, a mystery. That for now, she is something the listener can choose to unfold, a facade to shatter. It sets up the album with the acknowledgment of pain nestled in a person too young and immediately layers the notion of the song with a heavy and dreamy timbre. It constructs a world with characters and themes, chronic callbacks to a childhood dog and the mystical “David.” She sings, “Making me real when you mailed back the papers,” insinuating abuse and love, the tragic blend of the two. She says with certitude, “Told you I’d love you forever and I meant it…If you’d have asked you could spit in my throat// I was cold, you were older// You built me a fire. ” Dollface is is depicted by foolish unabashedness and “Doing the Play” sets the stage of the joys and betrayal. 

Track 2, “Visions” picks up with a more emotionally present and lighter tone, as if the stranger decided to make eye contact all at once. It feels increasingly like she wants you to be listening, that she wants to tell you the story. While the lyrics are still technically morose, they carry themselves with gumption. It taps into her distinguished, playful indie-pop side and the 20 year old artist states that the “…song is about loneliness. It’s about being in love with somebody who’s really mean to you, and the kind of perpetual loneliness that mental illness is like a harbinger of.” Filled to the brim with self-awareness, amalgamated with the inability to act upon the notion of the refusal to be small in order to fit into someone’s life, the denial of self-respect despite devout independence. She talks about wearing lace underwear for no reason other than to please herself while also relying on the attention and thoughts of a boy named David. She introduces the intrinsic longing and threaded motif of attempting to not lose the little pieces of her mother with lyrics like “I’m going by a different name// But I still look just like my mother// Her visions biting at my heels.” No matter what vast separation or diversion, Bryanne can still cling to the fact that they share a face. Discussing how she was willing to spend half her paycheck just to visit someone for a moment in time, the lyric is soon contrasted with “I begged you not to visit, you laughed me off// Never was an option, knew you’d hate what you saw.” For the subject, going out of their way for her is akin to a mere joke sitting next to her devotion. 

Bryanne often sets up her songs like jokes that only leave silence to wallow in after the punchline. “Susannah at the Wedding” comes splashing in with a more exultant percussion and a dazzling mobility. It feels like it was an injustice for this song to have not cut through to popularity, as it is upbeat like a shot full of adrenaline and it glorifies sadness in a hopeful way. The singer-songwriter starts with “Maybe one summer in a few years I’ll be the aging party girl// Hungry for the seventh time that week,” showcasing the way she romanticizes carrying yourself around without care or direction–  like smothering eating disorders in glitter and tears with more globs of mascara. It is surprisingly catchy, as she proves to be too emotional and sweet for the tartness that is life, relenting that “I wanted to love you that summer// But she got in the way// Susannah at the wedding swears I’ll be okay.” Bryanne’s capacity with character building is rare in this modern era, drawing attention to the overlap of regret, longing, and pathetics. She even says that she will keep returning until someone calls the police, an almost Lorde-esque “Writer in the Dark” reference, an homage to consistency of devotion in an ever changing world. 

Hana Bryanne, Unpublished Magazine

“Dollface,” the title track, strolls in subdued and weeds out leftover energy and life. It alienates her pristine voice, allowing the lyrics to somehow weigh with a heightened significance. She speaks of the notion of a silhouette or shadow of a man that once wandered through her life, the tone of her voice imparting the listener the ability to feel haunted in the way that she still is. Singing, “With a joint in your teeth// And a smile underneath// And my naked pictures on your phone,” Bryanne utilizes intense imagery rather than spelling out her multitudes of emotion. Something as simple as hoarding nudes can represent and span stolen vulnerability and pulverized innocence, substantiating the inner-turmoil of blaming yourself for being taken advantage of. She continues, “And he’s gonna want you// And you’re gonna let him// Stand on the corner and wait for the cops to come get him,” alluding to something more twisted beneath the surface, too private and personal for listeners to ever fully understand by analyzing lyrics and pouring over the agents of tone. It exemplifies the mastery of a complex and complete album, chock-full of depth to entangle to your own life. The only thing that  could make matters worse is being called “Dollface” after all of that, “Porcelain gathering dust when you give up the chase.” 

A river of reminiscent 80s synth pop trickles in with the vivacious and sugared sadness of “Clementine.” Similarly to “Susannah at the Wedding,” I feel that these tunes contain enough euphonious brilliance to have been more celebrated in the mainstream. I find “Clementine” to be endearing in every way, tackling what is truly vital. A heart melting song, depicting what could be a sister, a friend, but what is most likely her mother. She sings, “At the edge of the bed and my silhouette// Soft, she says “I was beautiful then”// I take your hunger, make it mine// I peel apart your clementines// Just promise that if I change my mine// I’ll still look like you.” It’s about fearing demise, growing old, and fighting to preserve the qualities that you share with your loved ones. Even down to the simplicity of peeling clementines, it radiates a pure form of love and kindness only found between relationships like mothers and daughters. Love that lets them share faces and tenacity. It describes a ferocity of aging mystifyingly and raggedly and taking care of those who once took care of you. It obtains a warm build up, she almost growls with the conviction of , “Oh, pick me up from the catfight,” she strides on her own. However, Byanne doesn’t get ahead of herself admitting, “If I pretend to sleep, won’t you carry me inside.” That she is still a fragment of that dwindling innocence, comforted by being tucked into bed, free of adulthood, cognizance, and responsibility. “Clementine” does not fully fade away just yet as “Clementine II” enters the scene. She makes time for a reprise of the slow acoustic yearning mantra of  “Won’t you stay where I can see you// Won’t you stay where I can go.”

My personal favorite, “Lake Michigan” blends smoothly with the same type of charming, yet forlorn strumming. This song conveys portraits of bitter significance drawing from the sensation of being abandoned by someone who was already imprinting one with neglect and hurt. With mighty gusto, she sings, “Somewhere high over Lake Michigan// I am contemplating sucide// Thinking of you calling me// By her name while the baby cried,” displaying the way sentences can act as daggers even a million miles away from the person that invoked pain. These jabs and flippant comments awaken a worthlessness inside that allows everything else to become blindingly trivial. I believe that the act of saying the wrong name, in its almost innocent and unintentional nature, cuts deeper than calculated devastation. It’s worse– instinctual and habitual, that someone else’s name can be so routinely slipped off the tongue whilst looking directly in your eyes. Bryanne sings this chorus like an uncontrollable holler, like it has been suppressed and waiting to be released with fervor. Sounding like a failing foolish vengeance, the sour honesty of acknowledging the feeling like she is “…something you never cared to know,” while also wanting the perpetrator to drag their feet home all the same, provides the song with a sympathizable agony. 

Bryanne then kicks up her pseudo-nonchalant accolade to being a striving artist titled, “Cool Girl Song.” She muses over the knack of faking it until making it and the self awareness of how she aspires to appear as a singer. She sings, “I’m singing a cool girl song// Convince a stranger I’m blase.” It is a fun and sweet intermission from the intense sorrowful tale wielding and self dissection. 

She brings back the melancholy sagas of woe with “Spades,” which I find to be most impressive in the realm of composition. I almost find it difficult to articulate due to its wholeness and greatness. It seethes into a powerful and isolating chorus, dispensing a message that I feel sets itself apart from its counterparts. It’s addicting and it is encompassed in closure and certainty, like she gathered power and faith as Dollface progresses. She bellows with grace and anguish, “Did you get what you came for?” then transitioning into one of the most tasteful and rugged guitar solos I’ve heard, exemplifying her immense range and potential. Angry courage haunting you “Like a face or a song you should know.” 

Bryanne is continuously vulnerable, but she is particularly so with “Valentine’s Day,” a track almost so personal that I do not feel privy to speculating and analyzing. With elegance, she tackles a serious story accompanied by soft piano and acoustic tremblings. 

Track 11 is “News” and I subjectively regard it as the best song on the album. It ricochets like recovery, like healing. It’s exploratory, yet classic all at once. It remains within the acoustic domain, yet brings a groovy sensation to the melody. It’s like “News” represents coming out on the other side of the tunnel– in some ways, it’s the redemption of “Valentine’s Day.” This is characterized with lyrics like “Playing it slower, but better by far” and “Smoked half as much and I got twice as high.” She even references her old song off Holy Ground called “Call It A Favor.” In “Call It A Favor,” another version of her writes, “You promised you’d walk me home// I waited so long for your follow through,” and in 2023’s “News,” she sings “Not going to kiss you until you walk me home,” signifying that she is the captain of her soul. This ability to interweave her past and present is a reason that I see a bountiful music career ahead of her. I think she is capable of cultivating die-hard fans who can see reflections of themselves and their history in her writing. Bryanne also uniquely integrates these satisfying background call and response vocals into her verses on this track. The horizon of “News” is bursting with witty ponderings like “Cheap kid can’t fill your shoes,” as the whole song is colored with change and acceptance of staying the same. She states, “Wear my Sunday best on my drive home to you,” acknowledging that she loves without shame even after being let down. She loves like revolution, like religion. She knows that she’s changing, but she proclaims “I go to bed with the same old jokes// I go to the bat for the strangest folks// Goes to my head when you kiss my throat// A stranger singing the words I wrote.” These lyrics are buried in the nucleus of the album, defining who she used to be and who she has become.The outro jams and writhes, leaving you with the notion of Bryanne getting better as Dollface nears its end/ 

A similar subliminality is conveyed on the final track called “Dollface Reprise.” The most stripped down song on the album, highlights her vocals in an intimate way. The song renders the reasons for trudging through adversity and the hopefulness that is illuminated with the epilogue. Singing, “You’re just another intern, not a poet, just a face// Save it for your resume, I’d better go, it’s getting late,” she illustrates the vast dejection in artistry and wrestling with not being taken seriously as a female musician. However, Bryanne knows she’s “..got a good thing going,” another slight reference to the age old “Klepto,” and “I’ve got my instincts, I’ve got a song… Just gotta live a little longer.” I am doused in such awe and strain of heart to have the privilege to not only discover blossoming artists such as Bryanne, but to also be acquainted with another’s psyche, defenseless and tender. Dollface is sincere and enchantingly thoughtful, a reminder of the paramountcy of courageousness in art. She wields truth and words into power and timeless weaponry. Hana Bryanne is “betting the news is good” and you should too.

Article by Katie Hulse

Photos by The Luna Collective, Bandcamp, and Unpublished Magazine