Hannah Diamond: "Every Night"

While most of her PC Music compatriots are content to embrace anonymity—to hide behind the ambiguous monikers and abstract runes that populate their album artwork—singer Hannah Diamond, also a visual artist who does design work for LOGO magazine, enacts something a little more similar to the public life of a pop star. Though she’s willing to appear on the cover art for her own music, each image comes with its own set of knowing manipulations that render her appearance plasticized and mannequin-like, just a little too perfect to actually feel real.

“Every Night”, which has been floating around for some time but is only now being presented as a proper single, doubles down on the uneasy slickness and hyperreality that populates the rest of her work. Built around a slightly-too-sweet synth loop and pulsing drum pattern that might have otherwise found a home on one of label head A.G. Cook‘s own compositions, she uses the track as a basis for lyrics that are a little more bizarre and self-reflexive than your typical tale of romantic pining. Sure, she’s singing about how she wants to see someone “every night,” but it’s a little messier than that. She’s not simply singing “I like you,” but “I like the way you know that I like how you look.” Rather than embrace simple sentimentality, she calls into question the role that physical attraction plays in romantic relations, and in a way that’s subtle enough that it doesn’t detract from the track’s saccharine synth-pop. After all, even when she’s delving into more serious subject matters, Diamond is still ultimately concerned with keeping up appearances.


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