There is something quietly decisive about putting your own name on a record. With Dash Hammerstein out today, Hammerstein, the Brooklyn-based songwriter and composer signs his tenth album without a metaphor or alias. It is a self-titled chamber folk collection shaped by a period of creative sobriety and experimentation, and it feels more like a clarification than a reinvention.
“Dash Hammerstein is my tenth full-length album, but the only one with my name in the title. Fuelled by the plaintive and droll lyricism of folk songwriters like Bill Callahan and John Prine, along with the humour of musical greats like Frank Loesser, the album puts honesty before all else.” The statement is direct, and so is the music. Across eleven tracks, he leans into restraint, allowing melody and lyric to carry the weight.
From Anyone Can Catch to Sixteen Pages, songs unfold with patience, built around voice, acoustic textures and subtle arrangements. Some tracks feel almost conversational; others open slightly through the presence of strings and woodwinds, but the atmosphere remains grounded. There is a sense of space throughout the record, an understanding that not every moment needs to be filled. It is chamber folk in its truest sense, intimate yet structured.
“But for a few friendly guest appearances on strings, horns, woodwinds, each track was written, performed and mixed by me,” he explains. That level of control does not translate into rigidity. Instead, it gives the album a steady internal logic, where each song sits naturally beside the next.
Hammerstein's background in film and television scoring for Netflix, Hulu, HBO and PBS still informs his sense of structure, but here the scale is intimate. “The music is simple, each song crafted to work on multiple levels, living comfortably in the background of a small dinner party and revealing depth on repeated and focused listens.”
On March 5th, he will mark the release with a double album show at Littlefield in Brooklyn alongside Alden Harris McCoy. Still, the focus remains clear. With Dash Hammerstein, he is not introducing a new persona; he is standing firmly behind his own.
