Lola Kirke is no stranger to shape-shifting—as an actress with a steadily ascending star, she’s had major roles in David Fincher’s Gone Girl and Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America, as well as the Golden Globe-winning Amazon show Mozart in the Jungle. While less in the fore, her passion for music has stayed constant, with her guitar following her from dressing room to dressing room.
Born to a musical family, Lola embarked on her own musical journey with her four-track EP released in 2016. Tracked live to tape in East Los Angeles and produced by frequent collaborator Wyndham Garnett (Elvis Perkins in Dearland, WYNDHAM) her debut LP Heart Head West, asserts her as part of the artistic tradition she holds so dear: delivering her own heart, laid bare for someone else to hear as theirs.
In place of a more traditional year-end best-of list, Talkhouse has asked some of our favorite artists to choose their favorite album of 2018 and tell us all about it.
—The Talkhouse Team
One of my most favorite albums that came out this year is Cornelia Murr’s Lake Tear of the Clouds. I’d been hearing it in all of its stages since I met Cornelia—she’s a really good friend of mine. When I met her, she came to one of my concerts years ago when I was in an all-girl country band. We were playing in some bar in a really small town, and she was in the way back. She secretly told me she played music too, and we started becoming music pen pals. It’s so exciting to hear songs go from, like, GarageBand iPhone demos to these magnificent compositions.
“You Got Me,” which I always call the “punch at the party song” is an old favorite. “I wanna know, how are you so steady?/Oh, right, you never drink the punch at anybody’s party,” is such a great lyric. For whatever reason, the song always makes me see a white stallion running in slow motion—but it’s, like, crying at the same time. “Cicada” is pretty extraordinary too. It sounds like having sex outside in summer woods.
Cornelia has such a classically beautiful voice and really carries on the tradition of folk music so perfectly, but I think that the production and the soundscape of the record really separates it from the things that it’s inspired by. The whole records kind of sounds like it’s coming from Atlantis underwater, and traveling up in a bubble to the surface.
Courtney Marie Andrews also put out an album this year, May Your Kindness Remain, and there’s a song on it called “I’ve Hurt Worse.” That kills me. I love country music, and I particularly love the country stars of yore— Loretta Lynn, and I guess even Emmylou Harris could fit into that category as well. Courtney has a classic quality that I’m excited and refreshed to hear. I feel like her contribution to 2018 is that she’s reviving this genre-within-the-genre of country music; Kacey Musgraves does a similar thing for me, but I think Courtney is working in reference to a more classic kind of country instead of updating it entirely. I just think her lyrics are so exciting and unpredictable, and yet very eloquent and smart.
As told to Annie Fell.
