Album Review: Cinder Well, No Summer
The essential marriage on Cinder Well‘s third full-length, No Summer, is between the Irish and the Appalachian strains of folk. Driven by the songwriting and vocals, guitar, organ and production of Amelia Baker, the nine-track/37-minute collection brings minimalist stretches together with passionate delivery, subdued melancholy with mischief and traditionalism with the progressive. Baker, who is joined by Marit Schmidt on viola and vocals and Mae Kessler on violin and vocals and who recorded in Washington with Nich Wilbur, is the central presence that ties the songs and the variety of influence together, and as each piece unfolds into the next, she brings character and setting to the proceedings that resonate all the more on repeat listens, whether it is the the relatively full arrangement of organ, banjo, vocals and strings on “Our Lady’s,” which is the longest inclusion at nine minutes long and departs in its midsection to ghostly strings suitable to the stated theme of its lyrics, or traditional pieces like “Wandering Boy,” which opens, or centerpiece “The Cuckoo” and the later instrumental “Queen of the Earth, Child of the Skies.”
One more familiar with folk tradition might take comfort in the recognizable nature of these songs, but I’ll profess my ignorance in that regard (and plenty of others), so they’re new enough to me, though the rising of Baker‘s voice in “Wandering Boy” calls to mind any number of Appalachian melodies as portrayed by the likes of 16 Horsepower, and in Baker‘s fiddle work on “Queen of the Earth, Child of the Skies,” she seems to find a way to make the point of bringing Americana and Celtic elements together without using her voice at all. Likewise, in originals like the title-track that follows the opener, or the sweeping interplay of string and vocals on “Fallen,” Baker underscores her work with an edge of rock influence — a mention of Dublin’s Lankum feels obligatory — and it would work as an arrangement of distorted electric guitar no less well than it does as presented on No Summer, where it nonetheless serves as a striking moment of depth.
Place is a consistent theme, and in that, the narrative of “Wandering Boy” fits in with the story of the record as a whole, which moves from the West Coast of the US to the West Coast of Ireland in the span of a lyric on “No Summer” and only grows more specific with “Our Lady’s” and the story of an abandoned asylum in the town where Baker has settled in County Clare — home to the Cliffs of Moher, Bunratty Castle, etc. — which serves as the backdrop as well for the epistolary closer “From Behind the Curtain,” opening with the line, “I write to you to tell you where I live now,” Baker‘s voice hesitant in the rhythm of the delivery as though she’s not sure how much she wants to share. After the captured wind whistles of “The Doorway,” “From Behind the Curtain” finishes full with violin and guitar before dropping out as the sound of waves on coastlines are directly compared.
Two places at once, then, and Baker chooses to end the record on her own, as opposed to elsewhere throughout, where harmonies play through as on “No Summer,” or, most strikingly, “Old Enough,” which follows suit from “Fallen” in a kind of linear build, but is more patient in the execution and joins its strings with layers of vocals in graceful and willfully haunting melody. It does not feel like a coincidence that “Old Enough” — which ends only with singing — should give way directly to the instrumental “Queen of the Earth, Child of the Skies,” which in its three minutes transitions from Americana pastoralism to more gleeful fiddling, missing only handclaps to punctuate the point. By the time “Queen of the Earth, Child of the Skies” is over, the sense of departure from the effect of “Old Enough” is complete, but there’s still “The Doorway” positioned curiously ahead of the finale. It brings not just a feeling of place, but also of experimentalism on Baker‘s part that she moves from description through the lyrics to actually putting the listener there.
Maybe that’s the last step, to actually bring the audience to where Baker is, though the song-as-letter form of “From Behind the Curtain” renews that distance, so perhaps we’re not all the way across that threshold. In any case, as it rounds out with Baker giving the details of the town where she lives — “The asylum, the pub, the catholic church” — and talks about going into the church for the first time, the shift that No Summer has made from its beginning point to its end is that from a point of wandering to having landed. And what’s in the middle? The flying cuckoo bird of the centerpiece track.
For this reason as well as for the turns in its second half from one piece to the next and the simple experience of hearing it, No Summer is best taken in its entirety rather than as single pieces. Baker‘s songs might work well as standalones, particularly “Fallen” or “Our Lady’s” or “Old Enough,” but one of the joys of the album is hearing them interact with each other, a harmony here and a pinched note of fiddle on “Queen of the Earth, Child of the Skies” left in for authenticity’s sake. The first element that greets the listener is Baker‘s voice, strong and resounding, and the last to go is a plucked guitar that seems less resolute, but the dynamic Cinder Well brings to bear throughout doesn’t need to be either thing entirely to seem honest, and in fact is all the more honest for not being. Baker‘s performance is hardly joyous, but it is a joy to behold, and though the album takes the time to describe the gray tones that surround it in Ireland where lavender L.A. skies might otherwise be, it is no more of the one than the other, and its portrayal is richer for the travels that inspired it.
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Tags: Cinder Well, Cinder Well No Summer, Free Dirt Records, Ireland, No Summer
I really like this. Thanks for reviewing it , I’ll definitely being buying the albums .
Sound excellent. Cover strangely reminds me of the first Sabbath album.