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On her fantastic 2024 release Keeper of the Shepherd, singer-songwriter Hannah Frances is fairly easy to categorize. The seven tracks are given shapely arrangements that emphasize the hip swing of ’70s country and the lush ache of modern indie. In a live setting, Frances and her tunes are much harder to pin down.
At her appearance at Show Bar this past Tuesday, she was joined by only two other musicians: saxophonist Sarah Clausen and Meredith Nesbitt, who switched between electric bass and cello. Stripped down as it was, the already expansive music was pulled apart even more to reveal the inner workings of each arrangement.
The central coil remained Frances’ voice and guitar playing. She was on her own with each, but throughout, Clausen used a loop station and effects pedals to either build thick vocal harmonies or add a ghostly haze to Frances’ singing. The saxophonist did the same with her instrument, which was already a pleasant spark that highlighted the jazzy underpinnings to the material. With her bank of effects and languid playing, the entire set snuck into the candlelit space occupied by Julia Holter and the final two Talk Talk albums.
The other benefit of leaving so much negative space in the playing was that it was filled back up with Frances’s soul-shattering lyrics. As she said in the bio for the album, the songs on Keeper were the result of much internal reconstruction as she dealt with grief and heartbreak. The minimalist setup onstage let these words filled with images from the natural world and crushing phrases like “I lost you within me” (from the album’s title track) cut right through the music and straight through everyone within earshot. No genre tag need apply.