Some people write songs with listeners in mind. Others, mostly write to explore themselves. With Ultraviolet, Cori Carter practices the second process, not the first. Not that these songs shouldn’t be heard—you share what you’ve done, allowing others to identify with what you’ve found. But the process is more about naming and taming the haunts of your own life than formulating something for others to like. More “story to share” than “product to sell.” 

Each of these songs began as one such story.
 
Accordingly, Ultraviolet isn’t concerned with sticking to any easily-defined sound. Disparate instruments make nice on this debut—a full color palette refracted in all its distinctions, then mixed till it's hard to tell where the pop ends and the Americana begins. Guitars from a faded cassette. Dream synths out of the streaming era. Fiddle and pedal steel, translating yearning from the gut into the air. All the inescapable ingredients of music that you might associate with a certain type of childhood in a certain section of the American South.
 
The lyrics are likewise kaleidoscopic. What began as a daily discipline of private songwriting during COVID proves widely legible— a little book of common prayer for anybody in a season of change. These stories may be specific in their concerns— the challenge of living in an odd brain in a religious community; the anxiousness of recounting each formative experience that lives in your body even now. But born out of that isolation, each song is embodied in a way that proves relatable.
 
Maybe you will recognize pieces of your own life in these songs? They’re here, if you’re interested.

the shape

Cori Carter