Claire Cronin is the author of the 2020 book Blue Light Of The Screen, about her obsession with horror movies and supernatural imagery, and she's also a singer-songwriter who makes uneasy folk music that's inspired by doom metal and drone. It's been a while since we've heard from Cronin, but she's about to return with her new LP The Bruise, her follow-up to 2021's Bloodless.
Cronin recorded The Bruise with her husband and regular collaborator Ezra Buchla, formerly of bands like the Mae Shi and Gowns. These days, Cronin and Buchla are based in Berkeley, and they recorded The Bruise largely at home, with occasional trips to studios in Oakland and LA. It features contributions from people like Julia Holter on harmonium and Deerhoof's John Dieterich on synth. But Cronin and Buchla are the only musicians on lead single "Black Water," a still and hypnotic six-minute acoustic folk song full of eerie, uncanny imagery. (It's not a Doobie Brothers cover.) Here's what Cronin says about it in a press release:
When I first wrote this song, I wasn’t sure what the imagery was about, but it felt emotionally true. Two years after I finished it, I had a harrowing experience while giving birth to my second child. That nearness to death and life felt like something the song prophesied.
It’s also about the poisonous kind of pain that some of us inherit from our parents. I’m on both sides of that now, as a mother and a daughter.
Musically, it was important to have a chorus of voices. So, Ezra and I recorded my voice several times, singing harmonies over my main vocal, and then Ezra added his own voice as a bass layer. The effect is ethereal, but the lyrics express doubt about a spiritual beyond – there’s only “nowhere.” At the end, I offer symbols that are powerful to me, and I repeat those three times, like a charm: marigold, tiger’s eye, baby cry.
Check it out below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Black Water"
02 "Before The End Of Time"
03 "There Was No Sound"
04 "Silent Night"
05 "Poison Arrow"
06 "Save A Little Hell"
07 "Iris In Pyre"
08 "Wait In Nothing"
09 "House In The Pines"
The Bruise is out 10/9 on Orindal Records/A Moth Object.
