Crooked words #9: Charlotte Cornfield, Jana Horn

Charlotte Cornfield - Hurts Like Hell

A day to be truly treasured when we can share brand new music from Charlotte Cornfield, as well as news of a brand new album on the horizon. Unveiled today, via its video below, 'Hurts Like Hell' is the title track from Cornfield's much-anticipated follow-up to 2023's wonderful Could Have Done Anything.

Hurts Like Hell also shimmers with the promise of much-deserved new heights; Cornfield has signed to Merge Records for the new album, and also invited in a wholesome collection of guests to join her in song, including Feist, Buck Meek, Christian Lee Hutson, Maia Friedman, and Palehound’s El Kempner.

Buck Meek, in fact, joins Charlotte here, on the album's lead single; a beautifully swaying country song that instantly digs its claws in. Wordy and beautifully narrated, the song feels immediately gripping, Cornfield's wavering voice held right on the edge of it all, Buck's own voice like an accompanying shadow to the story that spins out and on, held on for too long and now seemingly desperate to be heard.

The playing is lovely, the hooks immediate and full of grace; a much-desired and perhaps much needed return from a very special one. Lose yourself in it all below.

Jana Horn - All In Bet

"Yesterday I was dreaming, today I'm getting through," is what (I think) Jana Horn sings in the opening few lines of new song All In Bet, words that resonate a lot at this time of year, the slumped slope that follows the end of year period that comes wrapped up in resolutions and new starts. This is the grey now, a kind of aftermath to it all. Call it a settling, if you like, though it rarely feels very settled.

That mood prevails throughout Horn's new track, a second-glimpse of her forthcoming self-titled record which is released in just a few days. And it's beautiful, in spite of, or probably because of, that greyness, the heaviness of the burden it seems to carry on its shoulders.

The playing is delicate and purposeful. Horn's band consisting of GFP-fave Adelyn Strei, who plays clarinet and flute on the record, alongside Adam Jones - (drums/guitar), Jade Guterman (bass/guitar/piano), Miles Hewitt (piano), and Horn herself who adds guitar and synthesizer.

Horns voice plays the key role here, however, rolling her words out with a heaviness that is palpable, a weight that swings arm-in-arm and melancholy with the instrumentation, conjuring a mood that holds you right in place, eyes lingering on some blurry version of tomorrow until the last note rings out.

Could well be the first great record of 2026. Follow on Bandcamp to find out: