Hannah's Little Sister - '20'

Coming of age? Fuck that, Hannah's Little Sister are far too cool for that shit.

Being 20 is tough. You're no longer a kid and you can't get away with doing kid stuff. However, you have little to no experience with the outside world, pressures of trying to find your way in this wasteland get in the way and the easy thing is to succumb to the inevitable drink and drug temptation that is all around. You can always write a song about it, that's how all those awkward millennials seem to cope with these "pressures". And then they end up being these "anthems" about fuck all set to some post-Catfish bore-lad-rock-bullshit. Thank the lord (obviously Kurt Cobain in this sense) for Hannah's Little Sister. Apart from absolutely nailing what it feels like to be that young adolescent, they've set it to an absolutely phenomenal slice of slacker grunge.

The term "slacker" is obviously figurative towards the sound, I've gigged with HLS before and I can assure they're one of the hardest workers in Liverpool. They don't sound like it, "20" meanders its way into life with guitars that could have come from any Seattle grunge band. Or Sonic Youth. The song shuffles along with a charm that only Northerners possess, Meg Grooters' whip-smart lyrics are at first delivered with the type of lazy teenage stoner vibe that made Best Coast so adorable first time round but from the north of England- which objectively just makes it that much better.  Her voice grows and grows in stature however, with yelps and screams thrown all over the place to keep this phenomenally catchy song firmly in the leftfield. 

The song doesn't shift out of mid-tempo, but that doesn't mean it gets boring. You can get lost in the vocals alone, but the song in itself is nostalgia/"slacker" heaven. As a debut single, it doesn't offer you the band as a fully formed beast yet- obviously. What it does do is secure Hannah's Little Sister as one of Liverpool's most promising new bands, expect lots of gooey guitars, howl-along choruses and plenty of wry humour from these guys in the future. Oh, and they're fucking awesome live.

Words by James Kitchen