Charlotte Cornfield – The Shape of Your Name

You free yourself when you take away the script, says Toronto songwriter Charlotte Cornfield. Thats where this record came from, dismantling patterns and embracing the process. The album has a more honed studio sound than her scrappier 2016 release Future Snowbird, and for good reason: it was recorded in 5 different sessions over the course of 3 years. The songs are her strongest and most striking to date – contemplative and contemporary, funny and heart-wrenching – and theyve got that stuck-in-your-head-for-days quality that Charlotte is known for.

My initial intention wasnt to make a record at all, Cornfield muses. The whole thing kind of happened by accident. I went to The Banff Centre to do a residency and came out with these recordings that I knew I wanted to use for something but wasnt sure what. She brought the unfinished songs to her former roommate Nigel Ward in Montreal. He fell into the producer role seamlessly, says Cornfield. We took it slow and just tried things for a while until the vision settled in. There was no rush. It was freeing, and it gave the songs a lot of breathing room to develop.

Recorded by Grammy winner Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Weezer, Julian Casablancas) at a Banff Centre artist residency. The album is a collaborative effort with core members of Broken Social Scene (Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Charles Spearin) and features performances by Leif Vollebekk.