ORA COGAN - Hard Hearted Woman

It took twenty years and nine albums to graduate from cult artist to leading figure of the Canadian music scene. A steady flow of ideas with anti-folk, minimal, ethereal, dark undertones. After the excellent 2023 album "Formless", Ora Cogan has carved out a place in that otherworldly realm where the fragility of folk music, the energy of country-rock and the heavy tones of black metal merge without their creative sources ever declaring themselves openly.

On her first album for Sacred Bones, "Hard Hearted Woman", the Vancouver artist skilfully navigates between country languor complete with steel guitar ("Love You Better"), spells and sorceries that sound as if they'd escaped from a Kate Bush demo tape ("River Rise"), and hypnotic, spectral electronic grooves halfway between kraut-rock and Joy Division ("Division").

It's an allegorical portrait of contemporary unease that Ora Cogan stages on this chilly yet evocative tenth album, moving between fluid folk-psych ballads ("Honey"), old-fashioned echoes (the curious assonance with Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs Robinson" in the sensual "The Smoke") and ballads that gradually take on dark-noir shades and shoegaze reverb ("Bury Me").

"Hard Hearted Woman" is a lovingly restless record. Ora Cogan's voice is as seductively diabolical as Marissa Nadler's ("Believe In The Devil"), just as ready to venture into jazz effusions on the spiritual "Outgrowing" or even blues on the splendid closing track "Too Late". The Canadian artist's tenth album is a pagan love song in dialogue with the ineffable transience of our existence.

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21/03/2026