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 (March 21st), she's followed up that song with a second single, the haunting "Harvester," which conjures similarly eldritch Southern Gothic vibes. Stream it above via YouTube.
"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."
Death Folk Country is due out April 21st through Relapse Records.
