featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
November 11, 2021
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Charlotte Cornfield - Highs in the Minuses (Polyvinyl / Double Double Whammy) There's a lovely fragility to this Torontonian's music, a heart-on-sleeve vulnerability to the arrangements and Cornfield's lyrics. Those lyrics invite listeners to eavesdrop on everyday episodes: a friend's three-legged cat clawing a cardboard box, a rusted bike in the rain, getting the hang of skateboarding. The multi-instrumentalist's new collection begins with "Skateboarding By the Lake", strummed electric guitar over skittering drums for just over a minute and a half, closing with Cornfield repeating like a mantra: the kick push thing ... Highs features more fleshed-out numbers, but that unrefined element carries through songs like the pandemic-haunted "Headlines". The record's most standardly crafted tune lopes along on raw guitar and percussion before launching into a melodic chorus. The narrator tries not to give into the curiously dull days: So I just stay naked, make a coffee and some toast / Scroll through the news of the hour / Try not to hold it too close.
Cornfield plays most of the instruments on Highs, unadorned arrangements that lend to the session's slice-of-life transparency. These aren't lovesongs, though relationships pervade pieces like "Partner in Crime", with its steady plodding bass: I'm living in a storybook ending where we / Never had a chance to hollywoodize it / But when I look in your eyes / It rains in windy cities.
Several of Cornfield's new songs are delivered on piano, an approach that lifts the artist away from the cadre of excellent artists who don't stray far from their electric guitar (think Courtney Barnett or Angie McMahon). "Black Tattoo" is crushingly lovely, the singer vulnerable in her reach for her voice's upper range: I played a song for you / And then you pulled me in / Cue the tiny violins / And the little butterflies / Guess my heart is yours to burglarize. See also "Drunk For You", its narrator helpless in the sad ballet of a fading relationship.
Highs in the Minuses achieves its zenith with the country lilt of "21", presenting a short catalog of seemingly unrelated events that defined Cornfield's early adulthood like a midperiod Joni Mitchell. Charlotte Cornfield's conversational tone belies the depth of feeling beneath her folk-rock, just as her openness and honesty are benchmarks of a confident writer. Liberated from any trappings or pretense, what's left on Highs is pure heart.
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