Cronin, Claire

Cronin, Claire

Came Down A Storm

Ba Da Bing!

Came Down a Storm is an album that creates a world. Through Claire Cronin’s deep, intimate voice come songs of wreckage and redemption. A published poet and English Ph.D. student as well as a musician, Cronin uses images and symbols to craft songs that reach beyond the personal. She sings of death in a field, death at sea, dreams of dying, and a vision of a future where death is no longer allowed. Yet the music is not depressing; even in its darkest lines, these songs aim to float.  The album is a collaboration between Cronin and Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich, who met by chance at a Los Angeles show and began writing songs together long-distance. After sending recordings and ideas back and forth over email for a year, Cronin joined Dieterich at his house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to record Came Down a Storm. It was mixed with Jay Pellici at New, Improved Recordings in Oakland, California, where the full instrumentation was put in place. The album features Pellici and Chris Vatalaro on drums and Ezra Buchla and Heather Trost on strings. The spare, melancholy style of Cronin’s previous self-released work is evident in this album, but the music created with Dieterich takes Came Down a Storm beyond the folk genre. Cronin’s voice recalls Karen Dalton or Jason Molina in its sincerity and ache—plaintive and burnished with a kind of dark gold throughout. The instruments build around her singing: breaking to crescendos, driving emotional currents, or providing lively...

Cronin, Claire

Over And Through

Ba Da Bing!

In anticipation of Came Down A Storm, Claire Cronin's full band collaboration with John Dieterich (Deerhoof) which Ba Da Bing will release next Spring, we present this Best Of compiling her solo songs of the past few years. Cronin's songs are sparse, deep, and dark, and her gravelly voice reaches unexpected levels of emotional beauty. There's something Jason Molina going on here, by way of Karen Dalton and Neil Young. Cronin is currently working towards a PhD in poetry at University of Georgia, and her lyrics reflect the intelligence and insight of someone so devoted to the written word.

Cronin, Claire

The Bruise

Orindal

***Old radios. Ritual bells. A cawing crow. A mother singing in the darkness. These figures haunt The Bruise—the new album of heavy folk songs from musician and writer Claire Cronin.Her third release on Orindal Records after Big Dread Moon (2019) and Bloodless (2021), and crafted in the same spirit as her cult-favorite book, Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God (2020), The Bruise is an immersive sequel in Cronin’s brand of folk horror.Inspired by the atmospheres of doom metal and the spectral, disintegrating layers of avant-garde drone music, The Bruise is evocative and textured, but still centered on Cronin’s voice and guitar. Vocals are tripled with eerie harmonies, like sad angels singing. Electric guitars are bent to sound like old radio transmissions. The warm, spiritual hum of a harmonium spills across tracks. An Irish bodhrán keeps time at loose intervals. Musical saws, ritual bells, and violas make the weather that Cronin’s voice wades through.