featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
March 29, 2026
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
IF YOU ONLY LiSTEN to ONE RECORD THiS WEEK
From Toronto, Charlotte Cornfield calls her sixth collection a shy people love story. Hurts Like Hell follows on the heels of 2021's Highs In the Minuses and Could Have Done Anything from 2023, a pair of albums that made a case for the slyly observational songwriter as among our best. Here at R&B HQ, we remarked, Liberated from any trappings or pretense, what's left is pure heart, and called Cornfield's work with Josh Kaufman, a practice in economy of arrangement and of communication. Her songs deposit us into often awkward social circumstances, or encourage us to eavesdrop on personal moments of self-doubt and deprecation. Charlotte Cornfield could crush us with authentic emotion as readily as she could elicit a knowing smile of recognition for real people in familiar settings.
Where those recent records presented the artist working alone, or with a very select confidant or two, Hurts Like Hell is created live in studio with a select cohort of collaborators, including producer Phil Weinrobe, Ed Kempner of Palehound, Lake Street Dive's Bridget Kearney, Adam Brisbin and guests like Buck Meek and Feist. It's also Cornfield's first project for her new label home at Merge. While the trappings have changed, the songs remain (in her own words) immediate, spacious, lyrical, true. Now a mother in a stable relationship, embraced by shining stars like Lucy Dacus, her new work can be less confessional and more in the vein of a short-storyteller.
Charlotte Cornfield still looks and sounds like someone you might encounter alone at a corner table of your favorite coffeeshop, even if she's now friends with Feist. On "Living With It", she confesses to a past flame, I still have your number / I'll never delete it / Do you still have mine? A deceptively low-key vocalist, she lays her words casually around beats, paired with brushed guitars and an unintrusive snare. The title track introduces Brisbin's pedal steel, instrumentation that's new to Cornfield's music, adding dimension to the songs without driving them fully into country territory. Atop Buck Meek's backing vocal, Cornfield draws from another of those uncertain soical encounters: He said / You didn't give me time to answer / I didn't even need to think it over / I guess I'm just slow at responding / But I think I want what you want / I'm sorry I left you wondering.
The tunes on Hurts Like Hell, she explains, were written from the other side of something, recognizing that what can be painful in the moment is sometimes worthwhile in the long run. With its atypically spidery electric guitar, "Lucky" gives Cornfield Temporary relief from the / Crushing weight of everything right now / Long branches stripped of their leaves. Even in her most dire moments, there is sardonic humor in these songs. On "Lost Leader" she addresses a onetime musical infatuation: I used to buy everything you released / You kept me company while I fell asleep / Now I go to hear you play tunes / And there are too many dudes in the room / I just wanna leave. In some sense, Charlotte Cornfield can resemble a hybrid between Anna Tivel's quiet voyeurism and Courtney Barnett's absurdist diarist.
The new collection is bookended by a pair of songs, "Before" and "Bloody and Alive", the first describing her introduction to a future partner and the latter suggesting the birth of her daughter. Both feature watery, almost ambient guitar, like before and after snapshots of lives in transition. In between is music that is refreshingly original even as it's disarmingly familiar. On "Number" Cornfield observes, I feel differently about / The way snow piles up / On my doorstep now / Like a little wall. The jazz-adjacent "Long Game" is characteristically accepting, with the singer delivering what might be a self-directed mantra: More doing / Less trying.
ROUTES-cast March 29, 2026
^ Charlotte Cornfield, "Long Game" Hurts Like Hell (Merge, 26)
- Courtney Barnett, "Wonder" Creature Of Habit (Mom + Pop, 26)
- Fruit Bats, "The Landfill" The Landfill (Merge, Jun 12) D
- Johanna Samuels, "White Limousine (ft Courtney Marie Andrews)" single (Odd Man Out, 26) D
- Joe Pernice, "I'd Rather Look Away (ft Norman Blake)" Sunny I Was Wrong (New West, Apr 3)
- Alela Diane, "In My Own Time" Who's Keeping Time (Fluff & Gravy, May 22)
- Big Harp, "Runs To Blue" Runs To Blue (Saddle Creek, 26)
- Mikaela Davis, "Starlite Tonite" Graceland Way (Kill Rock Stars, Apr 24)
- Ben Chapman, "Feet On Fire" Feet On Fire (Hippie Shack, May 22) D
- Hiss Golden Messenger, "Shaky Eyes" I'm People (Chrysalis, May 1)
- Hanging Stars, "Glasshouse" Just a Day (Loose, Jun 19) D
- Luke Winslow-King, "Teacher's Desk" Coast Of Light (Bloodshot, 26)
- Deslondes, "Moving" Don't Let It Die Vol 1 (New West, May 22)
- Styrofoam Winos, "Pearls" Any River (Dear Life, Jun 19) D
- Sluice, "Ratchet Strap" Companion (Mtn Laurel, 26)
- Bicentennial Drug Lord, "Thaw" single (vfib, 26) D
- Palmyra, "Ribcage (demo)" Lake Louisa Sessions EP (Oh Boy, 26) D
- Milk Carton Kids, "I'll Go Home From Here" Lost Cause Lover Fool (Far Cry, Apr 24)
- Tift Merritt, "Finest Feelings" Sugar (One Riot, Jun 26) D
- Ian Noe, "Jukebox Blues (For Blaze Foley)" single (Lock 13, 26) D
- Drayton Farley, "Feel Like Getting High" Heavy Duty Heart (Hargrove, 26)
- Ryan Bingham, "Twist the Knife (ft Texas Gentlemen)" They Call Us the Lucky Ones (Bingham, May 15)
- Ashley Monroe, "I Hate Nashville" Dear Nashville (Mountainrose Sparrow, 26) D
- Silverada, "Highway Man" single (Prairie Rose, 26) D
- Flatland Cavalry, "Bird's Eye View" Work Of Heart (Lost Highway, 26)
- John R Miller, "If You Could Only See Me Now" single (Rounder, 26) D
- Marfa, "If It Ain't You" single (Big Machine, 26)
- Brennan Wedl & Waxahatchee, "Six O'clock News" single (Anti, 26) D
- Squirrel Flower, "Wheels (ft Babehoven, Billie Marten)" single (Polyvinyl, 26) D
- Magic Tuber Stringband, "Where the Place Becomes Forgetting" Heavy Water (Thrill Jockey, May 22)
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