Cinder Well announces her forthcoming new album ‘Cadence’ which features a number of contributions, including strings from Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum. Watch her video for the first single ‘Two Heads, Grey Mare’, also our Song of the Day.
One of my favourite 2020 albums was No Summer by Cinder Well, the experimental folk project of Amelia Baker. In the interim, she released a joint EP with another Folk Radio favourite, Jim Ghedi, and they toured together in 2022. That album came at an important juncture in Baker’s life; she had moved to study Irish music, shifting from the hazy California coast to the wind-torn swells of Western Ireland, a place that she came to love – the album was described as ‘a love letter to her new adopted home in Western Ireland’s County Clare’. The tug of those two places lend a force to the title of her forthcoming new album ‘Cadence‘ – out on April 21, 2023, on Free Dirt Records (pre-order here) – the title refers to the cycles of our turbulent lives, to the uncertain tides that push us forward and back.
That pull of place and influence has come across in her music – her 2020 ‘doom folk’ album felt more largely influenced by her time in Ireland, while her earlier album, The Unconscious Echo, released in 2018, was drew from American old-time roots.
With Cadence, the scales seem to have found a pleasing equilibrium even though she returned home to make the record. “I was continuously trying to reconcile having homes in two places,” Baker says. “I was trying to hold both of those parts of me.” Cadence is an album torn between home and a new land you’ve come to love. It’s about finding acceptance in the ever-changing tides and reclaiming your creativity during a time of great personal strife. Splitting her time now between two West Coasts (Ireland and California), she reflects that “the ocean is my homebase no matter where I am.”
Recorded at Hen House Studios, just blocks from the famed Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles, the songs search for a sense of grounding and a feeling of home. Though California’s beaches are the backdrop of this album, Irish influences also emerge. The folklore of the old ways still looms in her mind, now tinged with the kind of growth that comes from returning to your roots.
The accompanying press shares how Baker expands Cinder Well’s sound to include percussion as well as trance electric guitar and expansive string parts courtesy of Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum. Also featured is her old high school friend Phillip Rogers (Haley Heynderickx) on drums and who also collaborated on arrangements. There are also contributions from bassist Neal Heppleston (Jim Ghedi) and violist Jake Falby.
While there are still hints of the doom folk that Cinder Well is known for, Cadence balances heavy lyrics with a more expansive sound that nods to LA’s mythical Laurel Canyon years. “So much of my music has been made far from home,” Baker says. “There was something about recording in California that felt cathartic.” Caught between two worlds, Cadence is about recapturing the rhythms of life after a time of deep isolation, about finding balance amongst uncertainty.
Watch the accompanying video for her lead single and album opener, ‘Two Heads, Grey Mare‘, which is also our Song of the Day. It was shot in the UK’s scenic Peak District by filmmaker Jordan Carroll and assisted by Jim Ghedi. While the deep lyrics could stand alone as poetry – “Crick in the side of the frozen moon/Is a lake the size of our sunken room/We weathered the night in a drunken croon/Another trick in the tide and you’re gone too soon,” the arrangements have been gorgeously crafted. There’s a real weight in the opening that pulls you in, lifted by percussion over which Baker’s words really do work their magic. It’s so fitting that with the ocean being Baker’s home, this first song should be about a Selkie, a mythical creature – a seal when in water but transforms into a human when on land.
Cinder Well on Cinder ‘Two Heads, Grey Mare’
“This song is about a human spending a night with a selkie-like vision who comes out of the water. The selkie disappears in the morning, and the human is left with an experience that they can’t put their finger on, questioning reality and experiencing a huge sense of loss. I acted as both the human and the selkie in the music video, which to me portrays that we often look for an escape from ourselves, and we search for that in our external reality. In this case, the human finds this briefly and ecstatically, and then loses it again.”
Jordan Carroll on the video
“The initial starting idea I was given for this concept was someone spending the night with a Selkie, but it disappears and the person begins to question everything. I researched a few folk tales and found one about a man falling in love with a Selkie and taking it back home to live together. But after some time the Selkie starts to miss the ocean and finds its way back to where it belongs. I liked the idea that the journey back and forth played a part in the story and that you could portray the mood through various textures around the landscape.”
Pre-Order Cadence (out April 21st) here: https://lnk.to/cadence
BANDCAMP: https://cinderwell.bandcamp.com/album/cadence
Cinder Well has been confirmed for End of the Road 2023; see tour dates below.
CINDER WELL 2023 TOUR DATES
USA
FEB 23 – Los Angeles, CA – Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever (supporting Anna Mieke)
FEB 24 – Parkfield, CA – Middle Ridge Studio Launch Party
EU
MAY 13 – Uppsala, SE – Uppsala Konsert & Kongress
IE
MAY 18 – Kilkenny, IE – Cleere’s
MAY 19 – Dublin, IE – The Cobblestone
MAY 20 – Dublin, IE – The Cobblestone
MAY 26 – Cork, IE – Coughlan’s
MAY 27 – Waterford, IE – Phil Grimes
UK
SEPT 2 – End of the Road Festival
Website: https://cinderwellmusic.com