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
GenresFolk
Years active2015–present
Associated actsDeerhoof
Websitewww.overandthrough.com

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, was published by Repeater Books in October 2020.[5]

References
  1. Vodicka, Gabe (June 15, 2016). "L.A. Transplant Claire Cronin Brings Her Spectral Folk Sounds to Athens". Flagpole Magazine. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  2. 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.
  3. Sodomsky, Sam (June 21, 2019). "Claire Cronin: Big Dread Moon". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  4. Woodring, Sam (July 9, 2019). "Claire Cronin's New Album is Really Spooky". Talkhouse. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
  5. "Blue Light of the Screen". Penguin Random House. Retrieved October 27, 2020.
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