Claire Cronin - Big Dread Moon (2019)

Big Dread Moon by Claire Cronin is a record of spiritual urgency. Cronin's lyrics and melodies draw on the the stranger aspects of early American musical tradition, revealing the genre’s ties to “folk horror,” wherein supernatural and mundane worlds merge. Quietly sinister ballads like "Tourniquet" and "Wolfman" arise from the weird logic of dream, myth, and half-forgotten memories. Suburban homes, TV screens, and city landscapes are haunted by saints, beasts, ghosts, seers, and a “calm and decisionless” god. Lyrics which implore or command act like prayers or spells embedded inside Cronin's fever dream stories and personal confessions.

These are devastatingly spare, delicate, emotionally intense songs, arranged around electric guitar, viola, and Cronin’s singular voice.