Claire Cronin Came Down A Storm

Came Down a Storm is an album that creates a world. Through Claire Cronin’s deep, intimate voice come songs of wreckage and redemption. A published poet and English Ph.D. student as well as a musician, Cronin uses images and symbols to craft songs that reach beyond the personal. She sings of death in a field, death at sea, dreams of dying, and a vision of a future where death is no longer allowed. Yet the music is not depressing; even in its darkest lines, these songs aim to float. The album is a collaboration between Cronin and Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich, who met by chance at a Los Angeles show and began writing songs together long-distance. After sending recordings and ideas back and forth over email for a year, Cronin joined Dieterich at his house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to record Came Down a Storm. The album features Jay Pellici and Chris Vatalaro on drums and Ezra Buchla and Heather Trost on strings. The spare, melancholy style of Cronin’s previous self-released work is evident in this album, but the music created with Dieterich takes Came Down a Storm beyond the folk genre. Cronin’s voice recalls Karen Dalton or Jason Molina in its sincerity and ache—plaintive and burnished with a kind of dark gold throughout. The instruments build around her singing: breaking to crescendos, driving emotional currents, or providing lively counterpoint to the lyric’s funereal themes.