Dorthia Cottrell: Death Folk Country (Translucent Gold Vinyl)

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. On her new album, Death Folk Country, 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.

Last month, Dorthia Cottrell — the mesmerizing singer of Virginian sludge-grunge titans Windhand — announced her forthcoming sophomore solo album, the aptly titled Death Folk Country, and unveiled its mournful, acoustic lead single, “Family Annihilator.” Today she’s followed up that song with a second single, the haunting “Harvester,” which conjures similarly eldritch Southern Gothic vibes.

“Where I’m from, and probably most rural places in the U.S., there is a strong Christian religious presence, whether you identify as being religious or not,” Cottrell, who was raised in King George, Virginia, commented of the song. “And it was always my feeling that that has a lot to do with being surrounded and immersed in nature and every part of your life being at the mercy of it — even when it is merciless and brutal. When you’re surrounded by something so vast and beautiful, the presence of ‘god’ and whatever that might mean to anyone, is blatant and undeniable. To me, ‘god’ is nature and God is Mother Earth, so also to me, when I’m back home or anywhere like that I feel deeply the presence of my own idea of spirituality, the wonders of it and the feeling of being something small in the face of something totally out of your control.

“That’s what ‘Harvester’ is about. Bad or good, in the patterns of nature you can see the patterns of all life, maybe even the patterns of the universe, too, and that symmetry to me is god, and I’m grateful for it.”