Singer/songwriter Cornelia Murr discusses her relationship to her artistry, questions that life demands an answer to, and her sophomore album, ‘Run to the Center.’
Stream: ‘Run to the Center’ – Cornelia Murr
Cornelia Murr released her debut album, Lake Tear of the Clouds, back in 2018, establishing her sound as one that embodies a style uniquely her own: Alternative, psychedelic, airy, and elegant.
With vulnerable and introspective lyricism coupled with production that is reminiscent of a siren’s call, the London-born, New York-based singer/songwriter made a memorable introduction and rooted herself as an artist to watch.
Admittedly, Murr says that her first record felt like some sort of divine intervention, that pieces were falling into place more seamlessly than she could have ever expected.
“It felt like a miracle, the forces that came together to make that record happen… I thought it was going to be a longer climb. It’s not everyday that a brand new artist puts out a full length record,” she confides. “Everything started with a bang, I didn’t know that record was even going to come out when we made it, but then it did.”
“My whole life changed so much after that, for the better.”
Just when Murr felt like she had some momentum going with her first record, she was stopped in her tracks, like countless other artists, by the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
Combining the isolation with label troubles and interpersonal conflicts, Murr was thrust into a period of uncertainty. This era that not only saw her questioning her continued career in music but also countless other questions that life seemed to demand an answer to with a fervent urgency.
Moving to the center of the United States, restoring a battered house in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and recocking with the supposed answers to the many questions life asked of her led to the creation of Run to the Center, Murr’s sophomore album and grand return to music. With lyrical wit, poetic contemplations, and production that lives somewhere in between folk, pop, and the stars above, Run to the Center (our now via 22TWENTY) is a warm and fully realized return for Murr.
It’s no wonder that Murr feels this sense of providence when it comes to music; she’s seems to have been called to it through countless avenues. “I do come from a musical family, my mom is very talented” – Murr’s mother plays flute on the outro for the 2nd track on the record, “Pushing East” – “it’s cool to collaborate with her… she’s infused in this record a bit. She plays flutes, guitar, she’s a poet, a painter, she’s a very artistic person… my brother is super musical… pretty much everyone in my family plays something.”
Your voice is sweet
Echoing familiar off the basin
The new girls on my harmonies sound great
You’re right back where you belong
Where you were all along
An audience of one is no fun
An audience of one wasn’t enough
When I see you down the line
You will no longer look like mine
– “Pushing East,” Cornelia Murr
Murr says that from a young age, there was always a strong sense and comfort in the thought of being a full-time musician.
“When I was a little kid I was sure that was what I was going to be, and of course throughout the years, reality set in, it’s not always what I thought I could be… but I always focused on it, it was always kind of with me.”
With her first record, Murr says, “It propelled me into this new chapter and then it became very very difficult for that to happen again… all the forces that came around disappeared a few times.”
Luckily with this new album, Murr, “feel[s] for the first time ever, actually, that I have a proper team around me. I’m finally on some sturdier ground.”
Murr created Run to the Center with fellow musician and producer Luke Temple, an artist that has collaborated with the likes of Adrienne Lenker and Hand Habits. Murr and Temple’s connection and collaboration is one of the many facets that (almost feeling predestined) came about to help create Run to the Center.
“Somebody had left a mix in my car and there was a Luke Temple song on the CD and I was so moved by it… literally the next day, coincidentally, I met him. I was sitting outside on the sidewalk eating some fries and he sat down next to me.”
Murr was 25 at the time, and Temple had heard some of her demos. They began working together but life got in the way before they could fully commit to working on a project together, until Murr found herself in the midst of another deterministic run-in.
“A couple years ago, it just worked out that we were living in the same neighborhood and I started seeing him around a lot and we were like ‘let’s make a record!’ I always wanted to and it did feel like some sort of completion of a cycle and a dream… working with him was so fun, I’d love to work with him again, he’s a genius.”
Murr and Temple began working on the record in LA, but not long after they began, he came out to Red Cloud, Nebraska, where Murr was in the midst of restoring a home she had just purchased in the town made up of 946 people.
“We started making the record in the LA area and he’s just so down and curious… he came to Nebraska. Luke and I finished the record in the house when it was completely fresh and barely liveable,” she recalls. “We recorded in a very makeshift way, [and] that also felt like a full circle kind of thing, it was just very meaningful.”
The house in Red Cloud, while certainly not the artistic epicenter of the record, served as a deep well of inspiration for Murr in the creative process. Red Cloud is 20 minutes north of a point that is considered the geographic center of the United States.
“The house has served as a little bit of a metaphor for trying to get to the point of whatever it is that you want, and that sometimes I think is not literally running towards it…The record is not really about Nebraska or the house but it is about me being at a point in my life where I was being pulled in a lot of different directions. I really wanted to leave LA, didn’t know if I should move back to New York.”
“Where to live was a huge question along with many other large life questions that I feel… are suddenly blaring in a very sudden and urgent way. It felt very overwhelming to me to answer them… and so I ended up here, which is the last place I thought I would ever be, which is, in a way, in the middle of all these other things in other directions. It was a very lonely but very strengthening experience.”
Having lived a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, Murr says that, “It was the last thing I ever thought I would do, this place is not where I’m from… I’m not really from anywhere, so it makes just as much sense as anywhere else… it strangely did feel like the right thing to do. ”
Among a culmination of coincidences, it is certainly no surprise that this project is as intriguing and dynamic as the elements that make up its story.
From start to finish, the album’s lyrical structure is strongly picturesque and undoubtedly pulls at the listener’s heartstrings. Take “Skylight” for example, the opening track on the album. Murr has a distinct talent of taking listeners into moments from her life that feel intimate and formative, almost as if we’re some invisible third-person viewer.
It’s all thanks to the ways in which she assembles her lyrics; it makes for a listening experience that stands out among other artists putting out music today.
I feel the pull over the sea
But stronger within me
Time’s a different thing
For you man than for me
When I come up for air
May you be in sight
I won’t forget the nights under your skylight
The framing of a dawn
All that was to come
It put me back alongside a living song
Oh the joy in what’s yet to become
Apart from the lyrics, the album’s production is just as entrancing as Murr’s vocals across the project, mixing elements of jazz on tracks like “In the Wings” and jumping to more folksy tones on something like “Spiral of Beauty.”
Something that stands out in particular when it comes to sound is the album’s outros, many tracks containing pieces of spellbinding sonics that stretch on and on, only making the listening experience all the more exciting. Take “Bless Yr Lil Heart” for instance, the outro on the final track induces this floaty, cyclical, delightfully disorienting feeling. Synthesizers, bass, percussion, strings, and more elements all come together to create an incredibly stimulating outro, this track serving as one example of the many that take this route on the album, “On Bless Yr Lil Heart, that [outro] found itself in the making of that track… we were just messing with it and I don’t think I knew how it was going to end and Luke got into this sort of really funky outro… it was born from a jam session… I did the vocals alone and revisited that later… I had a lot of fun with it one night and kind of lost my mind,” Murr says jokingly.
This heart of mine
It’s an empty room
It’s a crowded tomb
It’s a closed fist
It’s a full moon
And it shines
Brightest the loser
When you’re not here to see it
It burns it blooms it opens
For everyone and you
Bless your little heart
Bless your little heart
From the end to the start
Bless your little heart
With her first LP in 6 years, Murr promises to make a fully realized entrance back into performing with this record.
“I have, to be a honest, a pretty fraught relationship with playing live, but it’s not because I hate it, it’s that I have often had to do it solo for logistics reasons and I really don’t want to do that anymore… I’m gonna be touring a lot this year beyond these shows and I’m just happy to say I’m determined to make it work… I have not fulfilled what I want to do with my live performances yet and I feel very hungry to figure that out… I’m really excited and I feel like it’s time!”
With the release of Run to the Center, Murr has been met with newfound realizations when it comes to what her art means to fans.
“Sometimes I’m really blown away by some of the DMs I get,” she shares. “They’re about healing specifically… to get that message back to the extent that I have has helped me believe in it and helps me to continue. That’s the point! It’s for them, it’s not for me.”
Murr leaves Atwood with this, a piece of wisdom she’d impart to her younger self if she could jump back in time: “What you’re doing when you’re writing music and putting it out there, which can feel really vulnerable and can feel kind of self-centered sometimes, what it really is, ideally or in truth, is a service. When other people are responding to it, it’s a generous act… If you’re sincere in what you’re doing and it resonates with people, it’s a gift to them… it could be healing to them, that’s the way music is for me, you know?”
Everyone at Atwood Magazine and many music lovers beyond certainly know this feeling all too well.
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“Run to the Center” – Cornelia Murr
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© Laura-Lynn Petrick
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