DORTHIA COTTRELL – new album out

Across both her solo work and as the vocalist of renowned doom band Windhand, DORTHIA COTTRELL envisions her music as both a document of love and a reconciliation with death.

Her new album Death Folk Country is released today on Relapse Records.

On her new album, Cottrell wards off death through creation – the most distilled form of love. The spirit of love passed on through her words will be the ultimate reward for earthly suffering. Cottrell’s enigmatic presence guides listeners down a path of introspection – Death Folk Country’s massive scope touches upon tales of love, loss, and so much more.

“This album to me is about painting a picture of a place where my heart lives. I’ve always been asked what ‘kind’ of music I play by people,” Cottrell explains. “The title Death Folk Country is partly me describing a genre that fits the sound – but it’s also meant to be taken as a Naming, a coronation of the world inside me. Death Folk Country is the music and also the land where the music takes place, and the two have always been inextricable from each other.”

Cottrell’s voice, a quavering alto, fills the emptiest of canyons. Singing in echoing harmony with itself, her voice is a kind of prophecy, bringing home to the present thoughts and realizations from the future, even as Cottrell buries herself in remembrance of the past.

Watch the previously released video for “Family Annihilator”

Lead single “Family Annihilator” directly speaks to the unease and tension of Cottrell’s surroundings. “Porch lights keep the demons at bay,” she sings over crashing cymbals and a field recording of birds. “I had never played it before, I kind of brought it out of the attic,” Cottrell says of the song. Despite being over a decade old, “Family Annihilator” spoke to the moment she was in. With the threat of another four years of conservative offices in power,Cottrell thought of family back in the South who would be voting, and remembered something her grandfather, a farmer, had told her years ago: “If a crop is diseased, you have to burn the whole crop.” “’Family Annihilator’ is a result of me wondering if the whole field must burn today, to save the flowers of tomorrow,” Cottrell says.

Elsewhere, the sounds of Cottrell’s childhood can be heard all over the album, and no more so than on “Harvester” and “Black Canyon” – tracks decorated with chimes and monk’s bells; what Cottrell would have heard when sat out on her front porch in King George. These are sounds of nature longing. These are sounds Cottrell associates with both her upbringing and also the world of Death Folk Country.

All songs written and played by Dorthia Cottrell.
Additional guitar and slide by T.J. Childers and Drew Goldy
Violins by Jon K.
Organ/piano by Jon K. and Dorthia Cottrell
Lead Guitars on Midnight Boy by Gina Gleason and Leanne Martz
Bass on Midnight Boy by Parker Chandler
Additional harmonies by Sallie Nash and T.J. Childers
Death is the Punishment for Love & Death is the Reward for Love- soundscapes by Jon
K. and Hell , vocals by Dorthia Cottrell
Photos taken by Dorthia Cottrell and edited by Annie Warren and (Jay?)
Recorded and mixed by Jon K. at SANS Studios in Richmond, Virginia.
Produced by Jon K. and Dorthia Cottrell
Mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege Mastering Studio in Portland, Oregon.