Q&A: Hana Vu Reflects on Her Personal & Musical Growth with 'Public Storage'
AGE WAS NEVER CONSIDERED WITH HANA VU - and neither was time. But both fell linearly, with age being the backbone of personal growth and time being the metaphoric trobe, soon becoming a theme of Public Storage, Vu’s debut album. Even though it’s technically a debut, Vu has been in her career longer than most can fathom, making her credible debut as an adolescent teen. It’s amusing to imagine Vu as a 13-year-old Angeleno musician in the heart of the indie-DIY scene. Yet, there she stood: drenched in passion, filled with words and a singular goal to set a lane for herself that the industry didn’t provide before. Public Storage almost feels like an homage to the “sad” indie girls who once stood, with Mitski and Jay Som on the brain. Just shy of 39 minutes, the record reveals a dialogue of vulnerability, each song picking up different emotive boxes scattered about. Similarly, when you might pick up old dusted boxes in storage, giving way to the record’s central theme. With her tonality fluttering through new-wave, grunge-rock to the emotional intensity of bedroom pop, it’s hard to deny Vu’s versatile aptitude, which makes the record so undeniably gut-wrenching to begin with.
As both of us were barely waking up, shrugging out of bed with hardly any time to dress, Vu chatted with me in her room via Zoom, with a sunny glare over the camera you only get while living in Los Angeles or Highland Park, more specifically. We had the chance to chat about the highly anticipated November release of Public Storage, the essence of baggage while cleaning out the old, and the humble beginnings of starting in the LA DIY scene, only allowing her to nourish herself as an independent artist even further.
LUNA: I would love to take it back to when I first saw you in the local LA years ago. You quickly rose to prominence in the indie-DIY community before anything, and back then, it was heavily dominated by this punk, surf-rock sound. Do you think being a part of that world helped shape your tone and the way you move through the industry itself?
VU: Those genres were always in the culture, and it’s definitely a part of my musical lexicon. Because when I was playing shows, as you may know, that sound was what everyone was doing. And so, I was really influenced by that because I wanted to be a part of the DIY scene, and that was the kind of music that we would listen to when I was a teen. I also don't even think that I have some sort of deep, distinct sound because I'm not very much a player, I correlate myself as more of a singer-songwriter, so I think that maybe it lends itself to me kind of doing a lot of different things that I actually like.
LUNA: That’s interesting because I feel like the release of Public Storage leans heavily on the singer-songwriter aspect. Each song you take us through, it's almost telling another chapter of a novel that you're reading to us. So I'm curious about the overall influences because no matter which way you turn on the record, it’s undeniably vulnerable.
VU: Sonically, while making the album, I listened to Sufjan Stevens, St. Vincent, and Taylor. Those are kind of my hallmark artists, but in terms of lyrically and songwriting, I feel like being in the DIY scene kind of influenced me in some way because I would play shows when I was a teenager and only jam to rock songs. But there would be moments in between while playing where there would be no words, and I would just feel so uncomfortable performing. That’s why now, I feel like I try and pack in so many words and emotions into one song because it makes me feel engaged, just like it does for anyone else watching.
LUNA: I'm intrigued by the album art you chose for Public Storage, especially with the singles that you put out like “Maker.” The imagery itself is so personal and raw.
VU: So when we first started conceptualizing the record a little bit over a year ago, I was talking to the creative director of my record label, Ghostly, her name is Molly Smith. She was asking me what I potentially would want to have for record covers and its aesthetics. I think my personal style and things that I'm drawn to are darker and more grotesque in a way. I feel like the music is very lush kind of sounding. So I was interested in that kind of dichotomy, an expression of myself and my own personal style. I wanted to do something where it felt like you had little pieces of myself, kind of like hyper magnified. That was kind of the ethos of that.
LUNA: The overall aura of your artwork correlates with your storytelling as well. I'm curious about the individual tracks on the record. Are the stories a mere reflection of yourself, or do you take inspiration from the outside?
VU: It’s all personal to me. In my experience, I obviously like to emphasize my storytelling nature through it all. I sort of play a character sometimes or describe a character, but at the end, it’s all me, I’m writing it.
LUNA: So was vulnerability a huge key theme for you while putting together the tracklist?
VU: That was definitely one of the themes of Public Storage for sure. It was like I imagined myself as this desperate character searching for answers or as this desolate person. When I was writing this record, I was desperate to get to any place in my mind or just in my life. So just being powerless is a central theme in all of it.
LUNA: I wanted to touch on the title for the overall record and why storage was such a big element. I know your family moved around quite a bit and public storage was a huge factor, so it almost feels like a metaphor for your life.
VU: When I first started writing songs at 13, it was almost like journals in a way. Over time, my perspective began to shift because there's a difference between making songs for yourself and creating something for others to hear. But I think there's another layer by adding desperation or attention-seeking. There's just another layer of psychology behind releasing music and leasing any sort of art, being public about what you create. That was sort of the thought that I had with this record, just putting my most encapsulating or my best-written record of my own so far, so I thought this was a more accurate account of my time on this planet.
LUNA: Were there any tracks on the record that felt harder to write because they were coming from a vulnerable place, or was that a feeling you had with the album as a whole?
VU: I think “Public Storage” is the most real song on there. That track I wrote, I believe before I even started working on the record, and I had kept it for a couple of months. Then at some point, I showed it to my co-producer and asked him, “what do you think we could do with this?” he didn't even end up changing it. So we just re-recorded the guitars, but that definitely has to be my favorite song so far.
LUNA: For fans and even new ones, where do you hope they take this record to or hope fans take away from Public Storage?
VU: When I was 14, I listened to St.Vincent and other stuff like that. I maybe wasn’t the target audience for it, but it made me think more intensely. It gave me a richer understanding of the world at a younger age, and I hope that same feeling is something people take away. Now, it gets harder for the younger generation to enjoy albums fully. So I hope that it reintroduces society to the idea of an album just simply telling a story.
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