Even as the sunshine attempts to peek out from the Springtime clouds, there is still a chill in the air, there is still darkness in the light. If there is a perfect time to listen to Cinderwell’s third album then late April/early May is surely it.
Amelia Baker’s experimental folk project is a thing of chilly beauty, a dusk-dark romance leavened with glimpses of Los Angeles sunshine. On Cadence she inches away from the minimalism of her previous albums to create something with a greater sense of hope, a greater sense of calm, a greater sense of space.
As much as Baker’s voice sits front-and-centre on the album – sometimes sounding like Sinead O’Connor at her most wracked – and the lyrics speak of a poet’s soul, it is the string arrangements that give the whole album the vital layers. Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada is responsible for the subtle changes of pace and tone. Never really rising above the contemplative, or the bruised sky shades, they, nevertheless, frame the beauty.
Two Heads, Grey Mare travels a familiar folk song path, one of selkies and shape-shifting, but it does so with an icy insistence. A violin swoops and pecks whilst a loping, sea-slapped guitar leaves you unsettled, unsure. It speaks of the West Coast of Ireland, Baker’s adopted home for the last few years, it is bleakly beautiful. In contrast Overgrown uses a major key, that’s not to say that it’s full of poppiness, but it carries that sense of hope. A cello and brushed drums are almost deliciously delicate whilst her voice has a raw edge.
It is on Returning and Gone the Holding where you start to see the first rays of sunlight peeking through. This is where a hint of Americana, the sight of endless California days, can be glimpsed. Baker returned to California, post Pandemic, as a way to reconnect and refocus and it is here that a greater sense of dynamics is able to flourish. Returning sets a scene that is darkly Americana, a slow-burn that swells towards a chorus, a gorgeous violin lightening the mood. As much as there may be sunshine, it is sunshine that casts “lonesome shadows”. Gone the Holding does something similar; it is both suffused with the cold Atlantic wind and Laurel Canyon light.
The title track, Cadence, buzzes and hums. It is super-slow, violin and subtle electric guitar stirring up a trancelike swirl, then Baker’s voice is an anguished howl. The sound of a primal scream caught between worlds. Crow, however, seems to be rooted, once again, in Ireland. Etched with darkness and the screech of bowed strings, there is more than a little of the Goth Folk about it.
Ultimately Cadence is an album of wide-open spaces, of the distance between two desperate places, an album filled with nature but nature that’s not always kind. It is an album where the sun is just starting to warm the very darkest of corners, perhaps an album of rebirth and renewal.
Gavin McNamara
TallFolk 