My Vox app’s playlist is loaded with an ever-shifting mix of albums, EPs, and singles. Some are by artists and bands who’ve colored my life for decades. Others are new or relatively new to me, with quite of those sneak peeks and former sneak peeks. It’s a good way to gauge forthcoming albums, I think, as—especially for emophiliacs such as myself—it forces you to reflexively compare and contrast the new to old. Does it hold its own? Or does it play like a popping balloon, instantly killing the mood?
One album that’s stood the test with aplomb is Cinder Well’s A Blooming Body, a song cycle that unreels like the shadowy cinematic treasures of yore. No matter what it follows, I lean in, listen. Her dispassionate delivery reminds me of Suzanne Vega’s—not in tone, but reserve. She has a poet’s eye for detail, painting vivid word pictures. The music supporting the lyrics is both stark and fleshed out, with several interludes conjuring—to my ears, at least—the John Cale-era Velvet Underground. She explains in the press release, “I strived to record the initial takes of guitar and vocals live, to give the music as much life as possible. As far as arrangements, I also brought in different types of instruments and players—in the past, I would use violin to centre most of the melodies, but on this record there are horns, synths, e-bow and other fun textures leading the melodic instrumental parts.” In a way, her songs play out like lines from a Maggie Smith poem: “Late in the season, we sit ankle-deep/in weeds and flowers. In weeds we call flowers.” They’re compelling, all.
“While the Womb Screams Silently,” the first track, is an excellent introduction. Inspired by the film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, about an 18th-century artist and her reluctant subject, it portrays the external and internal battle against the patriarchy. “Beyond the Pale” steps into the shoes of someone who’s come to realize that the wrongs her partner claims she’s committed may be about control. Some songs detour away from heaviness: “Ashes,” for instance, celebrates neighbors, while “Of Nettles and Roses” turns a garden into a metaphor for something more: “you remember the way that nettles felt the first time you were stung/and I must tell you/be it as it may/the good news and the bad news is that/things are always changing at the rate that they were changing/at before.”
Cinder Well, by the way, is the stage name for L.A.-based singer-songwriter Amelia Baker, who plays guitar, violin, piano, synths, Rhodes, e-bow, and organ. She co-produced A Blooming Body with Harlan Steinberger. It’s well worth many listens.
The Old Grey Cat 