Anjimile’s whispered falsettos and warm acoustics still warrant comparisons to Sufjan Stevens. But while Stevens spent his early records discovering his identity as it related to God, family, and landscapes, Anjimile spent his albums sharpening his identity between the pillars of gender, faith, and friendship. On You’re Free to Go, the North Carolina-based singer-songwriter sounds more at ease and comfortable than ever before, no matter what troubling tasks or forks in the road splay themselves in these songs. Anjimile puts it best in “Waits for Me” over muted electric guitar: “When I was a little girl, I wanted to be free… When I was a little boy, I wanted to be real.”
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Ora Cogan: Hard Hearted Woman [Sacred Bones]
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Nine albums into her career, Canadian songwriter Ora Cogan has found a new label, Sacred Bones, and a new home for her otherworldly folk music, which can feel gothic and galactic in equal measure. She manages to maintain a spare, intimate throughline on Hard Hearted Woman even as she builds out her band with organs, fiddle, Wurlitzer, Nashville guitar, mandolin, 12-string acoustics, pedal steel, and more. Perhaps it’s a case of shared DNA—Cogan assembled her ensemble from the noise and folk scenes she’s already a familiar face in in Victoria, British Columbia. For anyone with a deep-set love of Grouper or a passion for driving on back roads late at night, Hard Hearted Woman is appointment listening.
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Cut Worms: Transmitter [Jagjaguwar]
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