1 year of newsletters! + FREE stuff inside 💸

newsletter birthday giveaway, future content for paid subscribers, + more

my name is hannah sandoz. my friends call me hann. my mom calls me hanny. my best friends call me critter. i’ve been publishing this newsletter at the same time every month for free for a whole twelve months now. congratulations to me! and congratulations to you, dear reader, for witnessing this experiment in typeface. i can’t wait to share what’s coming next

lyrics deep dive

i can’t help but remember a year ago

went to your parents’ in western mass and i don’t know

i wrote “burden” huddled on the floor of an old dorm room in ohio. it was improvised and recorded in one take using a Beta 58 and a vintage Sear’s guitar. the subject of these words was my first partner in college who so feared closeness that his love for me showed up as haphazard and cowardly.

i felt stuck, frozen, forever cold

when i decided to try this on my own

i always thought things would stay casual between us, but i’d eventually spend thanksgiving weekend at his family home. as someone who grew up with an unstable family life, i felt nervous and yearned for his parents’ approval. they welcomed me into their home as a part of their family, and it was a touching milestone in my first adult relationship.

lost a lover, lost a friend

lost a hulking, hurtful burden

i lost a home

the disregard he would treat me with eventually overpowered the joys of watching him grow, so i ended our on-again-off-again relationship of a little over a year for good. eating thanksgiving dinner with his family all those months ago, i had no way of knowing i’d never see his parents again, or play with his cat or his baby brother. tears still well up in my eyes writing this. it was 6 years ago, but that love felt real to me.

today as i’m writing this, i grieve a relationship just as impactful as the one grieved in “burden”, but in very different ways. even so, i’m having that same experience of grieving a new home. and i can’t help but wonder if these old homes miss me like i miss them.

⚠️ trade offer ⚠️

recently i spoke on the phone with my mom. i was musing on and on about new years’ resolutions in the cheeky, elongated tone i use when i’m trying to make someone laugh (i think we got a few in). “this is really good stuff”, she said. “you should really write about this in your newsletter. you’re a great writer.”

so i’d like to propose a trade offer.

i receive:

- $5/mo.

you receive:

- the same newsletter everyone gets for free AND

- a second, secret publication with raw demos, journal entries, + more personal writing

i’ve been doing this newsletter for a year now and i’ve never asked for pledges. i’ve demonstrated a fair amount of consistency and commitment to this publication. if you like what i do enough to buy me a coffee every month, then i promise to deliver juicy tidbits to your inbox. in this second, more exclusive newsletter series, i promise to reveal content that would leave my free subscribers dripping with envy. so- you down?

newsletter birthday giveaway

in the past year, i’ve amassed a loyal following of 72 lovely human beings. about 43 of them open my emails and honestly that’s more than i anticipated. as a way of saying thank you to my loyal supporters, i’m giving away some free merch!!!

this design is 100% out of circulation and will never be printed again, so act fast if you want some merch that features it! i’ll ship these bad boys to anyone, anywhere for free. here’s how to enter:

critter-cally acclaimed

this month i’ve felt a bit antsy musically.. lots of new opportunities and challenges are rising from the mist. i’ve felt the need to pursue a wild card for this month’s column, and what better place to find inspiration than our good ‘ole friend bandcamp dot com?

i dialed up their web address and searched for the chicago tag, where i discovered a “duo from dorkville” (their words not mine) called flowerhound.

flowerhound’s songs are breathless and carefree like a sunny afternoon bike ride. luckily for us, they just released a new ep full of gorgeous songs that offer a glimpse of richness around the corner with deep summer on the way. in Sunrash, flowerhound grab the ephemeral things in life and dig their fingers in, spanning topics like cicadas, aliens, peeling sunburns and cheese.

“Blue Cicadas” immediately caught my attention with the field recording used in its intro. some small and tinny voices exchange words with the informal warmth of a tape demo before counting off the song and exploding into an acoustic guitar, all energy and mathy freedom. a mere three verses, the song first offers a glimpse of the singer’s embodied experience. they describe the way their brain fits in their head, or how it feels to bare their skin outside. then, they share about a brief but poignant encounter:

and i was screamin’ in the parking lot at the top of my lungs

the cake in the car has turned to rum

the officer in the car she stared at me

looked down in shame as i begged her please

these lyrics evoke the paranoid tedium of a fever dream. all chaos and raw sensation, we’re led through a brief but saturated encounter with the lead singer’s inner world. if there are comforts or peaceful moments in this world, they aren’t advertised. rather, they leans into its penchant for mutability and growth:

cicadas that were made when we were born

came up last summer from the ocean floor

ripped up the soil and crawled up my jeans

collect their shells and i call them refugees

cicadas don’t have much for themselves. their lifespans are short, they’re very small, and they spend most of their time underground— but as the singer points out in that first line, they do have one thing over many of us younger folks who are trying to figure out who we are in this desperate, tragic world: seniority. and with profundity like that, flowerhound might just put dorkville on the map.

i can’t wait to hear what’s coming next for this project, Sunrash is a lovely ep and u should go listen to it

so that’s all for now!

a lot of people have asked me why i didn’t ask for money sooner in my substack journey

it’s confusing and i didn’t wanna make a stripe account, plus i wanted to prove that i could keep up with it first sooo…forgive me haha………

enjoy taurus season— be sure to remain in pursuit of decadence— i have no way to enforce this but i will be keeping an eye out. it’s time to spoil yourself rotten

take it easy

you can’t mess it up!!!!

see y’all next month!!!!!!!!

critterhann