The Vancouver-based musician Ora Cogan exists in liminal spaces, or, rather, her music does. It transcends anodyne signifiers—folk-gaze and psych rock—to reach an indeterminate realm, where her prayer-like songs float like mist. Ephemerality prolongs. Her songs are the stuff of dreams until they morph into a nightmare: the nymph-like Cogan will lure you to a river for ablutions before drowning you like Omie Wise, or something like that. Yet you’re happy to bear witness—in fact, ecstatic.
Yes, Cogan has a similar folksy gothic aesthetic to PJ Harvey‘s White Chalk era. You know, full of witchy incantations, where ghosts linger in the shadows. Spirits in the ether—all that normal stuff. Yet being a mystic will only get you so far in this world (I once tried to emulate Julian of Norwich before I was thwarted by work and, truthfully, my own indiscretions). With Hard Hearted Woman, Cogan showcases that, in a patriarchal world, you have to be literally and figuratively ready to fight, body and soul, a record that is as corporeal as it is ethereal.
Also, the album is a spiritual response to the political climate. The longing is, in fact, a response to the malaise of modernity. For instance, the narrator of “Division” wrestles with ennui: “You have the TV on / The radio on / The lights all on / The radiator on / To seem more alive.”
Recorded with David Parry at Dream Club in Victoria, B.C., as well as in Cogan’s studio in Nanaimo, and remotely with Tom Deis, Hard Hearted Woman is a natural progression from previous records: Formless (2023), Bells in the Ruins (2020), and Crickets (2017). That is to say, the dualism at the heart of Ora Cogan’s sensibility—music that is both soothing and unsettling, hypnotic and disconcerting—remains on her ninth studio album, Hard Hearted Woman. Moreover, sinuous violins and diaphanous vocals swell like a murky sea.
Hard Hearted Woman does not reach the heights of Cogan’s previous album, Formless. Admittedly, though, a difficult task when that is the record of your career, or at least as of yet. On Hard Hearted Woman, Cogan challenges her own aesthetic: the equipoise between electronic and folk. Thus, there is a move towards the former, in which ominous synths interweave with a fuller and harder rhythm section, perhaps in reference to the record’s title. Although this sonic development works and Cogan should be applauded for the change, the LP is bereft of her usual folksy charm.
The opener,” Honey”, is propelled by a rhythm section not unlike something Sharon Van Etten produces with her goth-infused band, the Attachment Theory, punctuated by an undulating violin. Lyrically, Cogan turns a potential insipid lyric—”Love is stronger than hate”—into the album’s all-encompassing message—and it works. Why? Because Cogan delivers the words not as a mere idealistic claim but out of necessity in a time of division and hate.
Of course, Ora Cogan is otherworldly, but she is firmly rooted in this world, concerned with the environment and politics, all of which implicitly inform the record; in fact, the two do not contradict each other: transcendence is grounded in strife.
The opening guitar riff of “The Smoke” echoes Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”, augmented by the soft pattering of a conga. Thereafter, Cogan sings from a pantheist perspective—in other words, she sees the divine in everything. The broodingly bass-heavy and synth-throbbing “Bury Me” makes you feel as if you are walking through a foggy clearing, where you become invisible, and the only way is down. “I can feel the infinite,” Cogan intones, grabbing the ineffable by the throat.
Is Ora Cogan a modernist folkie? Certainly, Cogan’s music pushes the boundaries of form. Her 2023 album is entitled Formless, after all; there is a truth and a lie to its title. On the one hand, Cogan’s music is nebulous; on the other, there are potent melodies and choruses. Hard Hearted Woman is her debut via Sacred Bones, which is a perfect fit—especially as Cogan brings to mind another musician from their roster: Marissa Nadler, whose songs are more like reveries, more like a hypnagogic state, which can also be applied to Cogan’s music. At best, Cogan can make you feel as if you are drifting and drifting and drifting.
At the beginning of “Limits”, Cogan moans over a mellifluous acoustic guitar before it develops into a trip-hop number, in which Cogan’s barely-there vocals evoke Mazzy Star. Conversely, “Love You Better” is a spectral country number with a lachrymose pedal steel and electric organ, not to mention mandolin. “River Rise” is a wistful ballad in which the singer reflects on a failing relationship, complete with nautical metaphors.
Although Cogan does not write linear stories, she embodies a traditional balladeer in the way her songs seem older than her, older than the last century, older than the previous millennium, as if anchored in biblical lore, or a recondite text. It is a form of storytelling that reveals itself through ellipses, suggesting that a blank space can evince a spiritual truth that words cannot.
“Outgrowing”, the highlight of the record, starts with busy drumming and a melodic guitar, whose circling notes seem to be a metaphor for the soul’s peregrination. Its beauty is almost oppressive, particularly when, at the end of the track, the guitarist produces a flurry of mellifluous notes that seem to ascend to the firmament and back down. All the while, Cogan’s gossamer-thin voice seems to hover over the genteel instrumentation like a specter. The hymn-esque and lo-fi “Too Late” ends the proceedings on a positive note: despite the cruelty in the world, the narrator feels as though it isn’t too late.
Hard Hearted Woman compels you to contemplate where reality ends, and reverie begins, to sit within the liminal space that Cogan creates with her dream-like compositions. More importantly, the record is a warning of the perils of succumbing to hate; indeed, love is stronger.