CHARLOTTE CORNFIELD - HURTS LIKE HELL
On her sixth album, Hurts Like Hell, Canadian indie-folk singer-songwriter Charlotte Cornfield perfectly distills each of the disparate elements that make her music so endearing to create her personal masterpiece, her Harvest as it were. The influence of Neil Young has always loomed large in her music, so it should come as no surprise that one of the most memorable lyrics comes from the standout track "Long Game", acknowledging she "worship(s) my idols and wanted to be one, we're all listening to Neil Young. You said your favourite record was Zuma, I always dug you and your sense of humour." Beyond being at the peak of her songwriting powers on this album, she has gone one step further to elevate the songs by assembling a brand new band, her very own Stray Gators as it were, to deliver the country-tinged material with the sincerity that only the greats can. To hear Adam Brisbin's mournful pedal steel guitar performance on the album's title track, you can almost hear the ghost of the late, great Ben Keith accompanying him.
Lyrically, Hurts Like Hell follows a concise narrative arc, chronologically detailing a relationship from its initial germination on the serene album-opener "Before," through to the birth of her first daughter on album-closing "Bloody and Alive." Over the course of thirty minutes, the listener is treated to a mini-movie of Cornfield's adult life, navigating the social awkwardness that comes from meeting musicians in tiny dive bars in Montreal, exchanging numbers, and sending demos back and forth to each other, as detailed on the album highlight "Squiddd," which contains perhaps the most Millennial lyric of all time: "I want to share the files with you."
In keeping with the Harvest analogy, Cornfield makes a point to load this album with memorable guest appearances, most notably by Canadian legend and frequent Broken Social Scene collaborator Feist on the second single, "Living With It," as well as Big Thief's Buck Meek on the album's title track. Much like James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt's contributions to Young's watershed 1972 album, these guest spots never overshadow Cornfield's performance; rather, they serve as accents to highlight the underlying strength of her deceptively plain-spoken songwriting. Cornfield also makes a point to acknowledge Destiny Rosenberg in the liner notes, who appears repeatedly throughout the album as both a literal and figurative character guiding Cornfield on her journey ("suddenly the night wasn't dead in my head, plus Destiny said she'd go.")
It should come as no surprise that prominent long-running indie label Merge would want to release an album as strong as Hurts Like Hell. They have a proven track record of appreciating substance when they hear it, case and point Arcade Fire's debut, Funeral, and Fucked Up's masterpiece, Dose Your Dreams, not to mention recent releases by like-minded singer-songwriters such as Carson McHone.
Whether or not the rest of the world will appreciate this album is yet to be determined. While there are certainly no platinum-selling singles like "Heart of Gold" to be found here, I do believe that the lens of history will acknowledge Hurts Like Hell as one of the great Canadian albums of the 2020's. The problem with waiting for history to catch up is that it indeed hurts like hell.
-Leks Maltby