by Dean Wolfe, Prog dog Media released 2026
Ora Cogan feels like a creative spirit only partially committed to fully materializing in this world. I can’t think of many other artists who sound so consistently ethereal that you briefly wonder whether she might be an apparition rather than a performer.
And yet she is here—fully present, but almost like a mirror—reflecting light and colour from a place just beyond reach, somewhere slightly outside our usual frame of reference. I find I can’t quite approach her music in a conventional “album review” way. It resists that. It feels too artful, too emotionally layered, and too internally coherent to reduce to simple description, and it ends up demanding something more reflective and less fixed.
Maybe that’s the point of it. Perhaps it does something similar for other listeners too: why go to an art gallery (though you still should), or set out on a slow Sunday road trip (also still worth doing), when you can be quietly transported and held by her world—by Hard Hearted Woman and the company it keeps?
I’m especially drawn to the growing country influence in some of her new songs, a genre whose finest moments are built on honesty, plainspoken emotion, and unvarnished truth. I could even compare her, in a small way, to Neil Young—an artist driven by an everything-be-damned commitment to authenticity.
Her addition of violin always feels perfect for her too. She plays some on the album. Her vocals are gauzy and vulnerable, kind of plaintive at moments.
You can really feel her vision expanding on this album as a progression from the last. Although she already is well on her way in her musical journey.
I might seem a hard-hearted man, but I’m not going to score this album. I think you already know that. Would you give a beautiful flower you discover growing outside your back door a score?
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