Claire Cronin (singer-songwriter)
Claire Cronin is a singer-songwriter and poet. She has released three albums: Over and Through (2015), Came Down a Storm (2016) and Big Dread Moon (2019).
Claire Cronin | |
|---|---|
| Genres | Folk |
| Years active | 2015–present |
| Associated acts | Deerhoof |
| Website | www |
Biography
Cronin moved from Los Angeles to Athens, Georgia in the summer of 2015.[1] In addition to her music career, she is a poet and as of 2019 was a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Georgia, completing a thesis on horror films and television.[2] She has described poetry and songwriting as "equally meaningful, difficult and necessary", saying "they may come from the same inner place, but ... there is a different burden on poetry to silently perform emotion and nuance to a reader, [whereas] a singer's voice can impart these things in how it handles lyrics—transforming a really simple refrain into something profound, for example."[1] Cronin has named the songwriters Jason Molina, Nick Drake, Chan Marshall and Jeff Mangum, and the poets Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Frank Stanford and Sara Nicholson as influences.[1]
Over and Through (2015)
Over and Through, a compilation of Cronin's work produced over the previous several years, was released in 2015.[1]
Came Down a Storm (2016)
Came Down a Storm, produced in collaboration with John Dieterich of Deerhoof, was released in 2016.[1] Cronin has described the album as resembling a concept album by virtue of the songs' focus on "death and the afterlife" and their construction of "overlapping narratives and characters."[1] Gabe Vodicka, writing in Flagpole Magazine, singles out "The Unnatural" for praise and described the album's other songs as "both beautiful and terrifying—abstract stories of personal victory set against a sea of apocalyptic imagery."[1]
Big Dread Moon (2019)
Big Dread Moon was released in 2019.[3] The album's lyrics draw on Cronin's interest in horror films; musically, most songs feature only vocals, guitar and viola, while only some use synthesizers and percussion.[3]
Sam Sodomsky of Pitchfork described Cronin's lyrics on the album as "kaleidoscopic" and "heavy with pre-traumatic calm."[3] Sodomsky noted that the album strikes a "balance between tenderness and terror, the supernatural and the quotidian" and praised "Wolfman" as a high point, describing it as "a slow, menacing ballad sung with the devotion of a love song."[3] Writing for Talkhouse, Sam Woodring wrote that Big Dread Moon "betrays a strong knack for narrative, pacing, and imagery, probably indebted to her other artistic endeavor as a writer" and noted that Cronin's vocals "dart around in a way that builds suspense not only for what she is about to say, but for how she may or may not buckle her words into pitch-perfect severed parts."[4]
Blue Light of the Screen (2020)
Cronin's first book of non-fiction, Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God, will be published by Repeater Books in October 2020.[5]
References
- Vodicka, Gabe (June 15, 2016). "L.A. Transplant Claire Cronin Brings Her Spectral Folk Sounds to Athens". Flagpole Magazine. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
- Ross, Alex Robert (June 10, 2019). "Claire Cronin's new album Big Dread Moon is a full-length folk horror movie". The Fader. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
- Sodomsky, Sam (June 21, 2019). "Claire Cronin: Big Dread Moon". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
- Woodring, Sam (July 9, 2019). "Claire Cronin's New Album is Really Spooky". Talkhouse. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
- "Blue Light of the Screen". Penguin Random House. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
External links
- Official website
- Doyle, Jon (July 31, 2019). "Interview: Claire Cronin". Various Small Flames.