“The nexus of this album is indulging in these sad feelings, indulging in the senses,” Vu says as the sun begins to set through her windows. These songs luxuriate in an intensified, distilled picture of the rush of feelings that follow adolescence. “Being a romantic is different from being a romanticist,” Vu clarifies, and Romanticism does have less in common with lovetorn ballads than it does with 1700s Europe, when artists called for heightened emotion over argued reason and sensory details over logical ones. Most potently, this album somehow captures the luster of impermanence, in all its building wisdom, in all its funneling hope. Many of the songs invoke the contradictory feelings of youth directly–– “I'm just getting old / I'm just 22” on “22” most of them wander into the existential–– “Forever seems like too much time / but I just got here, stay awhile” on “How It Goes” and all of them are written concisely while providing windows of grand emotion. “You get wiser–– I feel quite wiser–– but less fervent, less hopeful.” She captures this liminal state poetically. But as I experience more things, I become more desensitized to those things,” Vu explains. “Being young, there's so much that I experience for the first time, all the time.

“Do you believe in starting over?” “Airplane” continues. The result is a unified collection of songs aching with depth and intimacy. For over a year she holed up to work on her songs alone, waiting until she felt the album was fully-formed enough to show it as a whole. With her previous work, Vu welcomed feedback as she went, but while crafting Romanticism, she shielded herself from outside opinion to preserve a singular vision. “Do you remember getting older / can you tell me what it's about?” Vu sings on “Airplane,” winking at the desire for tangibles in the unknown. To succinctly crystallize how it feels to be young, but also to be deeply sad.” Vu adds, “I’m just trying to convey my perspective as boldly as possible. Romanticism can feel both reminiscent of guitar-heavy late-aughts indie rock, and expansively futuristic in its layered synth bass. An artist aware of the contradictory compulsions of growth and human nature, she leans into that truth in juxtaposition. It’s a muscular, soaring chant on songs like ‘Hammer,’ which layers clipped guitar and mandolin strums with an ascending, floor-coating bass. Her voice is a low and silky boom on songs like “22,” accompanied by dissonant guitar strums underlining the angst and dissolution of adolescence. These songs pulse with meaning and jolt with playfulness, anchored by her powerful, sonorous voice. On Romanticism, her guitar-driven synthy pop and plush contralto fill out the coming-of-age experience with slick and sorrowful precision. She’s been making music since high school, with a full-length debut and several EPs behind her of glowy, brooding anthems of abstraction and emotion. This deep duality informs Romanticism, the newest album from Vu. “At the cusp of becoming a more capable and mature person, I feel grief for my naivete.” If youth’s ephemerality is part of its magic, doesn’t it make sense that an integral part of the experience might be mourning the days piling up behind you? “I was recently so close to childhood,” says Hana Vu, as she eats a piece of candy in her sun-striped Los Angeles apartment. Yet we so rarely hear about its embedded grief. We’re told it’s a breathless stream of novelty and ecstasy, and we’re told even more often how quickly it ends. Is there anything we like to be sung to about more than youth? A universal and yet elusive time that has a hold over all of us, it’s often evoked by the same platitudes.

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