User:Arms & Hearts/Charlotte Cornfield

Charlotte Cornfield is a Canadian singer-songwriter. She has released two albums: Two Horses (2011) and Future Snowbird (2016).

Early life
Cornfield was born in Toronto, Ontario and played piano, drums and French horn as a child. She began to pursue music as a solo artist after moving to Montreal, Quebec, where she studied jazz drumming at Concordia University.

Career
Her music has been compared to the work of The Band, Courtney Barnett, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, Angel Olsen, Elliot Smith, Sharon Van Etten, Townes Van Zandt, and Neil Young. She has named David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and Lou Reed as influences.

Her touring band comprises Bramwell Park, Craig Schram, and Stephen Tchir of The Provincial Archive. As of 2010, Cornfield also played drums in the band Bent by Elephants and the jazz quartet Takk.

It's Like That Here (2008)
Cornfield's debut EP, It's Like That Here, was released in 2008.

Collage Light (2009)
Cornfield's EP Collage Light was released in 2009. She cites Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell as influences, and has said the EP deals with themes of "people coming and going and drifting apart". Reviewing the EP in Hour, Dave Jaffer wrote that "Cornfield is destined for good-to-great things, and new EP Collage Light is a harbinger of that."

Two Horses (2011)
Cornfield's debut album Two Horses was released in October 2011. The album was recorded over a four-month period and features Cornfield on guitar, bass guitar, drums and piano as well as vocals.

The critic Bob Mersereau of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation praised the album as "a strong collection of songwriter tunes backing by a solid rock groove", and wrote "there's a definite spark about" Cornfield.

Future Snowbird (2016)
Cornfield's second album Future Snowbird was released in March 2016 through Consonant Records. The album was recorded live at Rooster Studios in Toronto, Ontario, was produced by Don Kerr and features appearances from Tim Darcy of Ought and Johnny Spence of Tegan and Sara. Cornfield said of the album: "I think the sound of the record is more upfront than Two Horses. It's got a kind of raw quality." The album's lyrics were inspired by Cornfield's time spent living in Brooklyn, New York City. Music videos were released for "Big Volcano, Small Town" and "Time Bomb".

The writer Sean Michaels praised "Mercury", writing that "Her songwriting is ravenous. Even here, in uneasy happiness, [Cornfield] sounds like she will wolf down her life as fast as she is able. The windfalls, the crises, the concerts, the chance encounters – she'll sprint through them all, collecting burs." Michaels also named "Mercury" as one of his favourite songs of 2016. Sarah Greene, reviewing Future Snowbird for Exclaim!, wrote that Cornfield "usually opts for unlikely, slightly awkward rhymes and metaphors, her oddball lyrical choices walking the line between heartfelt and goofy but always quotable, with songs often landing in delightfully unexpected places" and concluded that "Kerr got some lovely organic performances out of Cornfield and the band, who sound like they lived in the songs a while before they recorded." Liam Prost of BeatRoute Magazine wrote that Future Snowbird was "substantially more listener friendly" than Two Horses, but argued that "her narratives just don’t land nearly as hard as she proves herself capable of on her older cuts".