Hannah Georgas Gets Help From Holy Fuck Member to Go More Electronic

Hannah Georgas sits sprawled in a booth in the upstairs of Toronto's Rivoli club, sick as dog.

"It's the worse timing," she tells Spinner. "But what can you do?"

Georgas isn't kidding. With her self-titled sophomore album barely a week old, and an ensuing tour looming, it's hard to imagine a more inconvenient time for the Vancouver-based singer-songwriter to come down with a cold.

Her 2010 breakthrough This is Good, was a pitch-perfect blend of sugary-pop and heart-on-sleeve indie rock. But after fulfilling promo duties for the album, she took the better part of 2011 off and she admits that it's been a while since the general public has heard anything from her.

Like any music fan, Georgas' taste evolved over that period and for her second effort, she hoped to incorporate a stronger electronic influence.

"I'd been playing around on Garage Band and making my own beats," she says. "It was all very much the route that I wanted to go."

At the suggestion o her manager, Georgas hooked up with Holy Fuck member Graham Walsh to help bring her vision to life.

"I'm a huge fan," she says of the improv dance noiseniks. "I thought it would be an interesting mix to have the two of our worlds collide."

Last January, she kicked off a musical regime with a week-long writing retreat alone in a cabin on Salt Spring Island, one of British Columbia's Gulf Islands.

"I really made a conscious decision," she says. "I'm going to start demoing every single day, if I'm not demoing I'm practicing. Let's see what I come up with."

She sent the results to Walsh before leaving Vancouver for a three-month stay in Toronto, renting an apartment in the city's hip Parkdale neighbourhood.

"There was a lot of him and I just sitting in a room together jamming with all of his synths and electronic devices, just playing with me while I was playing the songs on guitar," she says. "It was a lot of creating together and lot from his end too."

As well as playing together, Georgas and Walsh did a fair amount of listening to records as well as a way of communicating their musical ideas with one another. Georgas recalls Walsh introducing her to the album Total Life Forever by English band Foals.

"He said to me, 'Listen to this record. I like the way they tie in the electronic stuff, everything sounds like it's live, that they're creating this and they can play this live. That's what I want to create with your record.'"

In numerous interviews Georgas has called the resulting album "a re-introduction" to her fans. And while Hannah Georgas ditches the spritely indie rock of This is Good in favor of a lusher, more mature sound, it still retains the hooks and personal confessions inherent to all her musical endeavors, staying true to the vision she and Walsh shared.

"Where I'm at musically and creatively," she says, "this is a good example of it."