Hannah Mohan with Hammydown

The Western Massachusetts singer-songwriter and former frontwoman of And the Kids returns to SPACE with a new solo album.

Hannah Mohan’s new album is a first in more ways than one. Time Is a Walnut is the first solo release from the Western Massachusetts singer and songwriter, after nearly a decade fronting indie-pop band And the Kids. The album also comes amid the longest stretch Mohan has spent in one place since she left home at 16 to hop freight trains and hitchhike across North America.

Making music has been at the center of Mohan’s life ever since, even as other circumstances have changed—sometimes radically. A long-term relationship crumbled in 2019. Then the pandemic arrived, bringing an end to her band. After writing a batch of new songs taking stock of her situation, Mohan asked Alex Toth of Rubblebucket and Tōth to produce them, the latest installment of a longtime friendship and occasional creative collaboration. During the heart of the coronavirus lockdown, they spent a week recording in Mohan’s basement in Massachusetts, with subsequent overdubs at Toth’s place in Brooklyn. 

Mohan left home in Northampton when she was 16, and spent the next five years crisscrossing the continent, busking on the street for a living and learning songs around the campfires she shared with other traveler kids on the road. Though she doesn’t talk much about the experience, it was obviously formative.

She came back to Northampton in 2012 and started And the Kids with a friend from middle school. The group released three LPs between 2014 and 2019 and toured hard across North America before dissolving in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. As she emerges back into the world with Time Is a Walnut, Mohan is ready to embrace whatever comes next, even though it’s not always clear what shape it will take.

Hammydown, the Burlington-based project from Abbie Morin (they/them), announces their debut record Former You, out October 3rd on Slings & Arrows.

Abbie entered their thirties March 12, 2020 (yes, they are a Pisces) while on the road playing in their best friend’s eponymous band, Caroline Rose. Drunk, bemoaning a canceled tour, and naive to the global chaos about to ensue, the two made a backup plan- a new Hammydown record. Working from a mouse-filled cottage in remote Maine, Abbie’s 2nd floor Burlington, Vermont apartment, and Caroline’s Texas home studio- they spent the past 5 years chiseling out a world for Hammydown’s songs to emerge.

Abbie’s colorful lyrics, pop infused melodies and 90s grunge guitar intersect with the complex, cinematic, and deeply thoughtful production of Caroline Rose to form a unique sonic palette that simultaneously feels as unexpected as it does familiar. The songs are rife with the frustration of a Queer millennial caught in the dumpster fire of our modern world, and Abbie isn’t afraid to laugh through the pain.

“I began writing the song Former You on the warehouse floor of the teddy bear factory where I worked at the start of the pandemic. Like most people, my lifestyle had shifted so drastically that I no longer felt like myself, and my mind was constantly swimming with anxiety.I often tried to escape the mundanity of my tasks by imagining myself traveling down a road, visiting past versions of myself and knocking on the door of each house along the way. These daydreams became lyrics scribbled behind stacks of boxes, and melodies hummed beneath a KN-95. I still picture myself at the doorstep of the person I was when I began this process. It feels so good to finally lay this finished piece before them, five years later, a testament to friendship, perseverance, and transformation.” – Abbie Morin