Charlotte Cornfield 
Hurts Like Hell
(Merge)
★★★☆☆

NOW on her sixth album, Toronto-based singer-songwriter Charlotte Cornfield has passed me by until now.

Playing a kind of off-kilter, countrified indie with help from friends like Buck Meek and Feist, Hurts Like Hell will be music to the ears of fans of Courtney Barnett, Adrianne Lenker and Faye Webster.

As the title suggests, it’s very much a relationship record, with Cornfield’s lyrics zeroing in on intimate memories. “You held my hair back while I was puking/I was pregnant and I didn’t know it yet,” she sings on Kitchen, while the characters in Long Game discuss their favourite Neil Young album.

Squiddd, an almost talk-singing track about a fictional band that only played one gig (the lovely chorus: “I wanna share files with you”), feels like the set’s fulcrum, with the songs that follow cutting a little deeper.

Michael Weston King
Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore
(Continental Song City)
★★★★☆

IN July 2024 Michael Weston King and his family had to deal with an unimaginable loss — his six-year old granddaughter, Bebe, was one of two girls killed in the Southport attack.

Recorded in Wales and Sheffield, the veteran British singer-songwriter’s new album channels his grief and pain. The Golden Hour is an anthemic, Springsteenesque opener. “We took our sorrow home, some took it to the street,” he sings, presumably about the far-right attempting to exploit the tragedy. But there’s a chink of hope too, with “let the healing begin” a repeated refrain.

The gothic title song is very Nick Cave, but most of all King’s vocals, lush country soul backing and mastery of mood make me think of Richard Hawley.

A loving, deeply moving tribute to Bebe, Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore was released on April 4, her birthday.

Gun Outfit
Process And Reality
(Upset The Rhythm)
★★★☆☆

FORMED in Olympia, Washington, in 2007 playing punk rock, Gun Outfit are now based in Los Angeles, purveyors of a more expansive Americana, which no doubt suits their new 80-minute double album Process And Reality a little better.

Recorded in late 2020 on a Californian ranch, Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith share vocal duties, with the former’s baritone echoing Nick Cave on a couple of the darker-sounding ballads.

The set cycles through many moods and sounds. Teardrops (Classic Hell On Earth) is inspired by the massive forest fires that recently terrorised large swathes of the state while lively opener Unfelt Loss is a commentary on the Process Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.

Like much of the work of fellow US indie guitar band The Decemberists, it’s an ambitious, high-concept record, though arguably feels a little unfocused at times.