Photo Credit: Colin Medley<\/p>\n
Review by Ava Wiseley<\/span><\/p>\n Canadian singer-songwriter Charlotte Cornfield is back with her sixth album, \u201cHurts Like Hell.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Although she\u2019s been releasing music \u2014 which is best described as folk with hints of country \u2014 since 2011, her recent contributions to the indie music scene feel fresh.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On this new record, her signature narrative songwriting style is as vivid as ever. She offers detailed descriptions about various events in her life \u2014 she names the neighborhoods, streets, and bars where they take place, and she introduces friends and other characters who play a role.<\/span><\/p>\n But the specificity of her lyrics doesn\u2019t take away from their relatability. Instead, their personal, diaristic quality solidifies her as one of this era\u2019s best musical storytellers.<\/span><\/p>\n The sparse opening track, \u201cBefore,\u201d sets up the theme of the record with a repeating lyric at the end of the song: \u201cReal love, no fantasy.\u201d Across the album, Cornfield sings about love in all its forms \u2014 sometimes beautiful, sometimes complicated, but always real and human.<\/span><\/p>\n Next is the lead single and title track, which explores feelings of hesitation when getting into a relationship. Without a doubt, it\u2019s the catchiest and most upbeat on the record.<\/span><\/p>\n Cornfield\u2019s knack for storytelling first appears in the bridge of this tune, in which she describes a man confessing to a potential lover on their porch. And in the chorus, we meet a friend named Karen who gives listeners wise advice: \u201cYou can\u2019t make it if you never even try.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHurts Like Hell\u201d is followed by \u201cLost Leader,\u201d one of the album\u2019s strongest songs. Over a slower but memorable melody, Cornfield writes in second person about a party that spirals into an awkward, drunken night. It\u2019s full of relatable, human feelings like, \u201cThese aren\u2019t your friends \/ They\u2019re just people who know who you are\u201d and \u201cYou said so many things tonight \/ Maybe you just shouldn\u2019t speak.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While the lyrics are the focal point of the album, the production \u2014 done by Phillip Weinrobe, who has worked with artists like Adrianne Lenker, Florist, Billie Marten, and Tomberlin \u2014 is worth mentioning, too.<\/span><\/p>\n Acoustic and electric guitars \u2014 the latter usually having a tremolo effect \u2014 appear throughout the album, along with piano, soft drums, and plucky bass. Pedal steel guitar is heavily featured.<\/span><\/p>\n Cornfield\u2019s vocals are also backed by several prominent contemporary folk artists, including Buck Meek and Christian Lee Hutson.<\/span><\/p>\n And Feist, a Canadian indie pop singer-songwriter and member of the band Broken Social Scene, is featured on \u201cLiving With It.\u201d Similar to \u201cHurts Like Hell,\u201d this catchy tune is about uncertainty within relationships. Cornfield sings, \u201cTelling you to go when I want you to stay \/ Maybe I\u2019m gettin\u2019 in my own way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n On slow jam \u201cSquiddd,\u201d she meets someone in a bar and is mesmerized by a song their band plays, which contains the lyric \u201cI wanna share files with you.\u201d Although Cornfield technically didn\u2019t write the lyric, her decision to make it the chorus of the song was a great one. Sharing \u201cfiles\u201d with a partner is a mundane act, but it’s also sweet because it reflects a life built together.<\/span><\/p>\n Cornfield\u2019s laid-back singing style already sounds adjacent to that of Courtney Barnett, but when she talk-sings on the bridge of \u201cSquiddd,\u201d that similarity is ever more apparent.<\/span><\/p>\n Another song on which she sounds a bit like one of her contemporaries is \u201cKitchen.\u201d Sonically, it\u2019s a lot like \u201cBig Deal\u201d from Lucy Dacus\u2019s 2025 album, \u201cForever Is A Feeling.\u201d It shares the same theme as that album, too\u00a0\u2014 love often takes a while to form between two people, but when it finally does, it can feel like it\u2019s been there all along. Cornfield has a three-year-old daughter, and this tune tells the story of meeting her partner and being pregnant.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cKitchen\u201d also calls back to the repeated line at the end of \u201cBefore,\u201d which was \u201cReal love, no fantasy.\u201d However, on this one, she describes her relationship as \u201cGrounded and factual \/ Passionate and actual.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, on the slow closer \u201cBloody and Alive,\u201d across which piano keys and guitars meander, Cornfield describes being in the hospital with her partner and having just given birth. This song arguably calls back to the opening track, too \u2014 perhaps the \u201cbefore\u201d was her time pre-parenthood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, \u201cHurts Like Hell\u201d proves that Cornfield is continuing to grow as a songwriter. Sometimes artists put out a great record early on in their career only for the quality of their work to falter as time goes on, but it\u2019s clear she has avoided that fate. And not by a small margin, either. By telling vivid, touching, and even amusing stories on \u201cHurts Like Hell,\u201d Cornfield displays her profound understanding of all the minute details that make up the human condition.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photo Credit: Colin Medley Review by Ava Wiseley Canadian singer-songwriter Charlotte Cornfield is back with her sixth album, \u201cHurts Like Hell.\u201d Although she\u2019s been releasing music \u2014 which is best described as folk with hints of country \u2014 since 2011, her recent contributions to the indie music scene feel fresh.\u00a0 On this new record, her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25732,"featured_media":53704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1524,1523,15,1],"tags":[157,2685,2686],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53702"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53705,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53702\/revisions\/53705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}