Fiddler, singer, and songwriter Laura Cortese has announced Lucky Water, her first new album in six years, will be out on 9th October 2026 on Compass Records. Nearly a decade after moving to Belgium, Cortese has built a life she never could have predicted. Now married and raising two young children while navigating what it means to call more than one country home; she channels that shift in perspective into Lucky Water.
Recorded primarily at Betty’s, the rural North Carolina studio opened by electropop duo Sylvan Esso, and produced by LOLLIES, Lucky Water finds Cortese looking at identity, belonging, and connection through a new lens as mother, dual citizen, and foreign resident. As the songs took shape, she first turned to Nashville singer-songwriter Mary Bragg to help hone them. At Betty’s sessions centred on Cortese’s voice and fiddle alongside reed instruments from longtime collaborator Matt Douglas who has previously worked with The Mountain Goats and Hiss Golden Messenger.
On Lucky Water, Cortese “finds wonder in the chatter of childhood, explores commitment and shared struggle and revisits childhood memories as well as looking outwards” on Hush Now Child, inspired by Belgium’s “Iron Harvest,” the ongoing discovery of unexploded munitions from two world wars.
“Living in another country can really put things into focus,” Cortese reflects. “When I’m back in the US or Canada, I’m struck by the relentlessness of the 24-hour news cycle, and the stress and existential dread at the forefront of everyone’s minds. People in Belgium follow the news, but it doesn’t dictate their lives. I’m reminded regularly that we can choose where to expend our energy, and that every time we step into a museum, onto a trail, or into a venue, we can reconnect with our neighbours and begin to find our way back toward radical hope.” You can pre-save/ pre-order Lucky Water at this link.
She has released the first single Face the Rain, a meditation on resilience that builds from plucked fiddle and airy vocals which you can watch the live video for below. It was written at her kitchen table in Ghent, Belgium, staring out a sliding glass door at a grey sky that, more often than not, gives way to rain. Cortese offers: “Living here, the relentless grey days can get you down. I’ve learned that the sun does come out once a day. If only for 30 seconds, and you’ve gotta run outside and see it when it’s there. When it’s raining, I try to remind myself that if the sun peeks through, I should check for rainbows. One day when my daughter was pretty young, we were in the house, and she said: ‘”Mama, Mama, it’s sunning and raining. Let’s go find the rainbow.””
