"Closer Than Hell": A Conversation with Hanorah

Interview by Imani Dominique Busby

Photography by Shelby Misreelal (@shelbyonfilmz)

Hanorah is a Montreal-based singer-songwriter whose music is as raw and powerful as the stories behind it.

In this intimate conversation, Hanorah opens up about her creative journey, the healing power of music, her latest EP Closer Than Hell, and the deeply personal experiences that have shaped her work. From surviving trauma to finding community through songwriting, Hanorah's story is a testament to the transformative potential of art.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your introduction to making music?

Sure, I’m from a musical family. My parents met in a band back in the '90s, and they played a lot of jazz, funk, rock and roll, classic rock, and soul music at home. I really fell in love with music when I heard the voice of Etta James for the first time in my teens, and I learned how to sing listening to that woman. She's incredible.

I took a hiatus, went to painting school, and didn't really do much with music at all. I didn't think that it was a path for me in a realistic, boots on the ground sense. Until I was dealing with the aftermath of the trauma from a sexual assault when I was 18. It happens to most of us, I think. But I realized that I was living a miserable life in the aftermath of that, and I decided no more. I was just angry one day and decided it wasn't fair that I was carrying the burden of what had happened. I had this idea that if I started a band and started playing music, that would help heal me. And I was right. So I did.

I dropped out of school and started writing my first songs in my sketchbooks from painting class, played my first shows, and discovered that through sharing songs about my experience, I connected with other people who had gone through a similar experience as well. And that brought tremendous healing. And this was before Me Too, so there wasn't really a container within the culture or my community to talk about that and process what had happened. But the pain that I felt demanded a witness. It demanded being held by more than one person for me to be able to face it in full and recover, and begin the process of recovery from what I'd gone through.

And from there, I signed a record deal and put out my first EP, went on tour, and discovered that I wasn't as crazy as I thought I was. And there were so many people who had gone through the same thing or were dealing with other sorts of difficulties in their lives, and were looking to find a way to create meaning for themselves in the aftermath of difficult things, or in the thick of really difficult things.

So for me, the creative process, whether it's visual arts or music, has come to be a really helpful means through which to cultivate that meaning and connect with people.

Thank you for sharing that with me. I'm so sorry to hear about what happened. I think it's very inspiring and beautiful the way that you took your experience and transformed it into art and music, and as a way to bring other people together so they can resonate with it as well. So that's very meaningful.

Absolutely. Yes, I made a choice. Before that, the choice was a passive choice to just wallow in my pain. But when your free will is violated in the form of violence, I think that agency is the thing we need to recover. For me, music is very personal, it's very active, and it was such a perfect medium for me to express what I needed to express in a way where nobody could tell me that it was my fault, or that I was exaggerating. It was really a safe container for all that.

Art really reconnects us with our power, not power over other people, but power to make a change in our own lives and create something beautiful for ourselves, which, when life gets really difficult or hectic, it's easy to forget. We have the ability to put flowers on the table or play our favorite song and dance in the living room. It's really easy to get stuck in the fog and let weeks and months pass in this sort of depression pit.

Anything creative, I find, really helps get away from that.

How do you approach writing about such deep and personal topics in your music?

For me, the songs that turn out the best come out of me because I'm experiencing an overwhelming emotion. That's the quickest way in for me. I'm not second-guessing anything. I'm just expressing what it is that I'm feeling. And I select the songs to put out into the world that are speaking to a larger theme or to an issue in the world, or speak to something in music.

Because it's not just interesting for it to be diaristic for its own sake. I don't think that something is interesting just because it happened to me. I want to be able to offer something, either a new perspective or something beautiful in what I'm doing. But often it will start with chords on the guitar or on the piano, and then I'll just start melody nonsense wording until I find a melody that I like.

And then it's, what is it that I'm feeling, what is it that I need to say, and then that comes out. And then I'm like, okay, unlocked. Now we tell the story of why we're feeling that way.

In the write-up that was shared with me, it was said that “Closer Than Hell,” your EP, is a departure from your soul and R&B roots. Was it intimidating to let go of those roots, or did it feel freeing? How was that for you, deciding to go in a different direction?

The sound on that EP was the result of process. It was very much an experiment. I worked with the producer Max Frazer, who's one of the fellows in the band here. He comes from a grunge background, the punk and shoe-gazey stuff from the West Coast. He's from B.C.

I just played him the song “Matty” one day, and he went, “That's perfect, will you let me take a crack at that?” So he did this production demo, and with his sensibility for walls of sound, he has a really strong classical sensibility. He loves the Russian classics, string arrangements, and horns and everything. And it just really elevated the emotionality behind the story of that song for me.

We didn't know where we were going. We just started making stuff, but we found a middle ground somehow between the soul, R&B, folksy thing that I had been doing and the indie shoe-gaze grunge. Somehow there is overlap. I don't know how, but there is. So we stumbled upon the sound in the process together, which has been really exciting.

Speaking to the more grunge vibes, my favorite song on the EP was “Barbed Wire.” I loved it. I was wondering if there's anything you could share about writing it or the creative process behind it.

Yes, it was almost torturous. That song started from a different song that I was trying to do. Max was like, “I think that you can write better than that now.” It was an older song that I had brought to him. Lyrically, it just wasn't fully there yet. So I was like, “Okay, we'll write another verse.” And then that led to a new verse, and that led to a new verse, and that led to a new verse. And it just spiralled into this whole other thing. Not a single word or note from the original song is there, but that's fine. It turned into something so cool.

But it was weeks of agonizing and stripping things and trying to force the old version in when it didn't belong. Eventually, I just accepted it. It was something new. I went into the other room with my sketchbook and my coloring pencils and was just writing down lyrics that I felt more in a poetry sense that had a really strong image of the emotion I was trying to express.

We were both in a creative block because we had a friendship falling out with a fellow collaborator. It happens. But that friendship was really creatively valuable to us. He was a very encouraging and positive presence for both of us, and losing his support in such a cut and dry way was really devastating. We couldn't move on with the record until we got through that. So the song became about that relationship, that friendship ending.

So, yes, I just looked for symbols, barbed wire for the feeling of being stuck in this creative stuckness, and the grief and the loss of the friendship came in the expression of the big vocals at the end. Then we were able to move on and do “Heavenly One.” So that was really good.

“Heavenly One” is so beautiful too. Is there anything you can share about that song?

That song, for me, is about asking the universe to slow its blessings down so that I do not self-sabotage. I was coming out of the ending of a long-term relationship when I started writing songs for this EP, not really aware of what themes I was going to write about. But a romantic encounter opportunity made itself known to me before I was really ready mentally. And so I was like, okay, the door is open, we are going to walk through it, I am just going to walk through super slowly and hope that my spirit can use some of his strength to handle it sober-mindedly, because it was such an ordeal ending that last relationship.

He was a collaborator of mine too, my ex, and a special person, but he was not taking care of himself, and the ending was really messy. So it was just nice to find a moment of tranquility, to be mindful about entering a new relationship and not just getting swept up into a whirlwind romance.

That's a beautiful backstory to both of the songs, a lot of your personal experiences that you channeled into it. I think everyone finds something for themselves in that. Thank you for making the music.

For my next question, is there a message or theme that you want listeners to take away from the EP or from your work in general?

I will speak to my larger body of work. I hope that people can feel through what I'm doing, what I'm sharing in everything, music and otherwise, that I think creativity is a flawless, human, natural path through difficulty. It's always possible to find some beauty in the world and in our lives, whether we have to make it ourselves, create it with other people, or stumble upon it in an unexpected place.

I think it’s really easy to get bogged down by the weight of the world and by the things that we go through in our personal lives. But everybody has a creative impulse, and everybody can contribute positively to the world and find kindness for others, and compassion, and make beautiful things. That’s been my journey through healing, whether it's from the most recent relationship or the trauma of the sexual assault. It's always been a tether to a version of this planet that I can stomach, and we can create a beautiful world for each other and for ourselves through that natural urge we all have to create.

I think everybody should try their hand at making something.

What are you most excited about for your Toronto show today? How are you feeling?

I'm feeling so good. I'm really excited to share the stage with the band and share the new songs. Honestly, they've really taken beautiful shape in a live format. “Heavenly One,” in particular, has become really special live. It’s a real moment of release, and I'm hoping that I can share a beautiful moment with everybody who shows up tonight.

Getting to play music for anybody, it gets harder. It's been harder since COVID to do this job, so it's really a gift every time I get to share a room with musicians like those in my band. Emily Steinwall is amazing. Emma Beckett is amazing. So we’re at church right now. It’s going to be great.

Do you have any last thoughts?

I'll be on tour throughout Quebec and Ontario for the summer and fall. I hope that anybody in any of the cities on my tour around those provinces will come and say hi.

If not, if they're just enjoying a private moment with music, whether it's mine or somebody else's, I hope they remember that they’re not alone in the things they go through, and that there is a path forward. Nothing lasts forever, least of all the difficult times.

I know that we’re in a difficult time right now. Today, Toronto is full of smog because of the fires in the prairies, and Montreal has a level nine air quality warning. So I know we’re all seeing the signs of hard times ahead. But we’re here together. And when we come together and put our differences aside, as kumbaya as that sounds, we really are able to do important and positive things and make changes for the greater good.

I feel like there’s a lot of discourse that makes it tense for people to relate to each other and communicate in a constructive and positive way. And I totally get why. There’s a lot of pain on all sides. But the number one thing that I’ve experienced is that when we put those differences aside and come together for a common good, good things happen. So I just hope we can all go to our humanity as things get really hairy, and say a prayer for those in need.

BACK

Your cart is empty

Your cart

Estimated total