Hard Hearted Woman

A longtime member of the indie and experimental scene of Vancouver, Ora Cogan began making sparse experimental folk albums in the late 2000s, and she gradually grew into a lusher, haunted, psychedelic sound with help from an increasing number of collaborators over the 2010s and early 2020s. Her tenth album, Hard Hearted Woman, is her haziest and trippiest yet, involving well over a dozen guests, including on synthesizer, organs, and electric guitar. Hard Hearted Woman was recorded partly at Cogans home studio in Nanaimo, with David Parry (Loving) at Dream Club in Victoria, and remotely with Tom Deis (Uni Ika Ai, Via Audio) at Pineapple Room Studio in the Hudson Valley. Parry and Deis are frequent Cogan collaborators who also play multiple instruments on the album. After starting off with the warmly simmering folk-rock of "Honey" (which contains the lyrics "Just a hard-hearted woman/Gunmetal smile/Guarding your heart") before delving right into one of the records most narcotic and seductive moments, "The Smoke." A soft-spoken band jam, its twangy pedal steel and bongos lend it a certain vintage flair. The albums more confrontational third track, "Division," then slides into gloomier, echoey synthesizer atmospheres, as if riding out the high in a nightmare. Later, "Bury Me"s droplet-like effects and more angular melody suggest a darker kosmische. Cogan returns to a warmer, Mazzy Star-like dream country on songs like "Love You Better" and "River Rose," although the clouds never quite part on Hard Hearted Woman, which ends on the fragile, romantic "Too Late," whose final unresolved chord progression accompanies the hopeful words, "You make me feel like it isnt too late." ~ Marcy Donelson