Claire Cronin is a doom-metal artist in the same way someone like Marissa Nadler is a doom-metal artist: she understands how to extract the occult energy of the genre and repurpose it for minimalist, haunting folk songs that wouldn’t sound out of place on a bill with Bell Witch. Today she’s announcing that she’ll make her return in October (naturally) with a new album called The Bruise, with the lead single “Black Water” proving to be yet another dark ballad about something unexpectedly ordinary. “When I first wrote this song, I wasn’t sure what the imagery was about, but it felt emotionally true,” the artist shares. “Two years after I finished it, I had a harrowing experience while giving birth to my second child. That nearness to death and life felt like something the song prophesied.”
Regarding the song’s composition, made up of gently strummed guitar and layers of spiritual blues vocals, she continues: “Musically, it was important to have a chorus of voices. So, Ezra [Buchla, Cronin’s husband and musical collaborator] and I recorded my voice several times, singing harmonies over my main vocal, and then Ezra added his own voice as a bass layer. The effect is ethereal, but the lyrics express doubt about a spiritual beyond—there’s only ‘nowhere.’ At the end, I offer symbols that are powerful to me, and I repeat those three times, like a charm: marigold, tiger’s eye, baby cry.”
Check out the visualizer for “Black Water” below, and pre-order The Bruise ahead of its October 9 release via Orindal Records here.
