Hannah has been writing music since her second year of high school and also began teaching herself to play piano during that time. She continued to write for several years before building a studio and recording her debut EP, Soul Poison (1998).
Since then, Hannah's output has been erratic in quantity but consistent in quality. She has released two full-length albums as well as a handful of singles and EPs, all receiving high praise from the music press. Hannah's now-out-of-print album The Thing That Feels (2000) featured several songs inspired by Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (Pre-dating the Broadway musical by several years.) The Thing That Feels also included "The Vampire Waltz," which is the first song Hannah ever wrote, as well as other songs all linked by the theme revealed in the title.
A few years later, as a result of a generous donation by an anonymous listener, Hannah made a video for her song "Carnival Justice (The Gloves Are Off) Part II." The video, directed by Chris Ohlson, featured puppets created by renowned Ohio artist, puppetmaster and sculptor Scott Radke. The video appeared on the Subterfuge EP (2005).
Hannah's covers of other artists' songs have also been well-received. The Meathook EP (2001) featured what one reviewer called a "soul-shredded" version of ABBA's "The Winner Takes It All," as well as Hannah's versions of Berlin's "The Metro" and Daniel Johnston's "True Love WIll Find You in the End." Hannah also collaborated with The Synthetic Dream Foundation to create "Trapeze" -- the music was composed by TSDF, with vocals, lyrics and vocal melody by Hannah.
Hannah's most recent release is Through the Gash (2007), an album that has been called "a masterwork in minimalism and stark beauty" (Absolute Punk) and "seductive and breathtaking from the start" (Gothic Beauty). Hannah writes, produces, engineers, and performs everything on her CDs. And, contrary to popular opinion, she uses no sequencing whatsoever. With the exception of drum tracks, all of the instruments and vocals are recorded and layered in real time, not looped or electronically generated or duplicated. Even the drum tracks, which are programmed using a drum machine, are painstakingly hand-altered, with some beats being dropped and others reversed in entirely specific ways.
Hannah is known for her intensely layered production and complex vocal arrangements. Her vocals, which have been likened to "wraiths filling the screen of a Tim Burton film" (High Bias), often move from clearly sung phrases and high, tremulous keening to whispered and spoken words, to vicious hisses and screams -- sometimes within the confines of a single song. The subjects and lyrics in Hannah's songs have a tendency to be obscure and metaphorical, often causing listeners to mistake her work for being fictional. In fact, Hannah classifies her music as entirely autobiographical, although not overtly so, and insists that it is actually magical realism, not fantasy, and definitely not theater. Hannah has said that she uses music to transform troubling feelings and experiences into something positive and hopeful, and that writing has served as a mechanism to work through and mend things in her life. It may take careful listening to hear all the various layers of sound and meaning, but devout listeners consistently claim that it is worth the trouble.
Hannah loves flowers, rap music and snow days, and is often distracted by bright and/or shiny objects and the perceived scarcity of cotton candy, but she says that the only thing that actually inspires her to create music is love.
Since 2020 Hannah has been releasing new digital-only music on her Bandcamp page.
Hannah has been interviewed here:
http://www.muruch.com/2007/08/interview-hannah-fury.html
http://www.adequacy.net/2008/05/interview-with-hannah-fury/
http://www.mellowtraumatic.com/images/the_mick_40_hfury_excerpt.pdf
http://vmunderground2.podomatic.com/entry/2007-08-21T00_31_49-07_00
Hannah's offical web sites are http://www.mellowtraumatic.com, http://www.antoinettesrevenge.com, and her MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/hannahfury
Hannah's Bandcamp page, with a name-your-price download of her 2015 single 'Not Sad' and all her new music since 2020 https://hannahfury.bandcamp.com
For more "information," go to:
http://www.mellowtraumatic.com/diversions_HannahBio.html
Beware The Touch
Hannah Fury Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Is something you
Have feared to know but always knew
Maybe it isn't even true
Maybe love cannot
Maybe love cannot shelter you
The furies are a triple threat
The worst to come has not come yet
Beware the touch they won't forget
Beware the touch of Antoinette
Still through the gash you'll reach to pull
The bones of someone beautiful
His veins stretched tight over his skull
The lullaby will become a lull
The lullaby will become a lull
It begins again
The feeling that I love and know will end
It begins again
The feeling that I love and know will end
I'll sing you fast asleep, my love
And all the dreams that you dream of
Will soothe you like a velvet glove
Wrapped around your heart, guarding your blood
Wrapped around your heart, guarding your blood
And when you wake, you won't recall
How light surrenders to the dark
So the next time that you start to fall
You'll swear he's the greatest love of all
And he will redeem the queen of hearts
In the song Beware The Touch, Hannah Fury explores the theme of love and its power to shelter and uplift or to hurt and destroy. The opening lines, "To have, to hold, Is something you, Have feared to know but always knew", suggest that love is something that people desire and seek but also fear because of its potential to cause pain and vulnerability. The following lines, "Maybe it isn't even true, Maybe love cannot, Maybe love cannot shelter you", pose a question about the true nature of love and its ability to protect us from harm.
The song then takes a sinister turn as Hannah Fury introduces the Furies, the fearsome goddesses of vengeance and retribution from Greek mythology. She warns, "The furies are a triple threat, The worst to come has not come yet", suggesting that love can unleash powerful and destructive forces. She then mentions Antoinette, a reference to the infamous Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, who was stripped of power, freedom, and eventually her life. The line "Beware the touch they won't forget, Beware the touch of Antoinette" suggests that love can be just as dangerous as a powerful and ruthless leader who can leave a lasting mark.
The disturbing imagery in the lines, "Still through the gash you'll reach to pull, The bones of someone beautiful, His veins stretched tight over his skull", depicts a bone-chilling scene of someone trying to retrieve the bones of a loved one, suggesting the pain of losing someone so dear that you want to hold on to even their remains. The tone of the song then shifts to a gentle and soothing lullaby as Hannah Fury sings, "I'll sing you fast asleep, my love, And all the dreams that you dream of, Will soothe you like a velvet glove". The final line, "And he will redeem the queen of hearts", suggests that love can also be a source of salvation, a way to heal and restore what has been lost.
Line by Line Meaning
To have, to hold
The act of possessing and cherishing someone or something
Is something you
This act is uncertain to you
Have feared to know but always knew
You've always had an innate, unshakable apprehension around this display of affection
Maybe it isn't even true
Perhaps having/holding as a concept is false
Maybe love cannot
It's possible that love is incapable of
Maybe love cannot shelter you
Love may not be able to provide protection for you
The furies are a triple threat
An ominous trio of figures associated with danger are lurking
The worst to come has not come yet
You're about to experience something even worse than what you've already encountered
If love is something you can just reject
If you believe that you can refuse love outright
Beware the touch they won't forget
Be cautious of these figures, as they will never forget the harm you've done them
Beware the touch of Antoinette
Specifically watch out for this particular character named Antoinette
Still through the gash you'll reach to pull
You'll seek to extract the desirable parts of someone despite the presence of a painful wound
The bones of someone beautiful
You'll attempt to take possession of the physical beauty of another person
His veins stretched tight over his skull
The blood coursing through his body controls everything including his thoughts
The lullaby will become a lull
The song meant to pacify will instead cause numbness
The lullaby will become a lull
The song meant to pacify will instead cause numbness (repeated for emphasis)
It begins again
The cycle of emotional attachment initiating once more
The feeling that I love and know will end
The sensation of familiar love will fade away
I'll sing you fast asleep, my love
I'll soothe you through song, my beloved
And all the dreams that you dream of
You'll dream of everything you've ever desired
Will soothe you like a velvet glove
These dreams will offer comfort like a soft glove on your skin
Wrapped around your heart, guarding your blood
They'll wrap around your heart like a shield, protecting what's vital
Wrapped around your heart, guarding your blood
They'll wrap around your heart like a shield, protecting what's vital (repeated for emphasis)
And when you wake, you won't recall
Upon awakening, you won't remember
How light surrenders to the dark
How illumination yields to the absence of light and gives way to darkness
So the next time that you start to fall
If you find yourself falling
You'll swear he's the greatest love of all
You'll believe he's the greatest and true love of your life
And he will redeem the queen of hearts
He will save the female ruler of your heart
Contributed by Isaiah T. Suggest a correction in the comments below.