Hazel English - New Waves

Words like summery, hazy, wistful, dreamy and nostalgic are probably going to crop up a fair amount when it comes to Hazel English and her debut song Never Going Home. In fact nostalgia and the old fashioned seem to surround the way Hazel has chosen to present herself and her work, from the sun-drenched polaroid picture by Brandon Long of The Only Magic Left Is Art, to Hazel’s style, which has a casual near-preppy easy going vintage look to it. 

So who is Hazel English? We know for certain that she’s from Oakland, California although she originates from Australia. We think (if we’ve got our facts right) that her old fashioned sound and image permeates right the way through to other aspects of her life (she owns a vintage store), she may have another folkier sounding musical project under a different name, and even her ‘real’ name Hazel English may not actually be her real name. Of course, we can’t be sure about any of that, Google / the internet isn’t always the truth, but the ten minutes of digging we did, if correct, revealed that Hazel is quite the creative type.

But what is certain truth is that Never Going Home is a sweetly jangling, chiming piece of indie pop with a reverb laden tunefulness that wouldn’t have sounded that out of place on the famous NME C-86 cassette from the eighties, and is, in its own small scale way, rather lovely.

Hazel English - Never Going Home