Cinder Well’s voice may be familiar even if you don’t instantly know the name. Her track ‘The Wise Man’s Song’ was the theme for Mackenzie Crook’s outstanding and quietly surreal comedy Small Prophets, a series that also provided incidental music for.
Cinder Well is the recording name of Los Angeles–based songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker. Her latest album is A Blooming Body which highlights an innate ability to write small songs about big concepts as well as focus on life’s minutiae. This is particularly prevalent in the lyrics of ‘Beyond the Pale’ which moves from the day-to-day of city life to how they relate to someone dealing with a difficult point in a relationship whereas the opening track, ‘While the Womb Screams Silently’, has the narrator describing the “restraints and projections of patriarchy” and contains the refrain “How do we know when it’s finished?” which has repeatedly popped into my mind’s-ear me since the very first listen.
“watching bristles crunch across the canvas
little splotches, patches form her silhouette
making it out in the mist
like waking up in a new bed after a bad day”
The metallic timbre of a resonator guitar works perfectly against the warmth of Baker’s voice which contains power without force, and contains tiny flecks of vibrato and some wonderful falsetto leaps where you also hear the warm zephyr of her breath. When harmonies are brought in they wrap the main vocal in rich layers of emotion. There are a range of contributing musicians playing everything from synth, drums, bass, French horn, sax, and tuba alongside Baker on guitar, violin, and keyboards, but much as these add wonderful colour and texture to the tracks you might find, like me, that it is Baker’s voice and guitar that haunt your memory long after listening.
Cinder Well was kind enough to put together a track-by-track breakdown of A Blooming Body so Joyzine readers can get a glimpse into the songwriter’s process of such a deep and thought-provoking album.
‘While the Womb Screams Silently’
This song is inspired by the movie “Portrait of A Lady On Fire” from director Celina Sciamma. In the film, a woman is arranged to be wed, and because of her intense resistance to the situation, her mother hires a painter to secretly paint her wedding portrait without her knowing. The song is about listening to your inner knowing, which often screams loudly but is ignored for the sake of conforming. Its the feeling of constantly trying to break out of the restraints and projections of patriarchy while stumbling over new ones and internalized ones along the way – “pulling at an endless thread of thistle – whose hooks and briars they catch things you thought you couldn’t miss ’em / while the womb screams silently for you to listen“.
‘Beyond the Pale’
This song is about the strange isolation of being surrounded by people in a giant city. I tried to capture the ‘there’s no there there ‘, intangible-ness of Los Angeles. It’s also definitely a break-up song, and the narrator is exposing their internal narrative; of their faults in the relationship, remembering fights, and feeling the alone- ness, and also the raw vulnerability of becoming free.
‘Ashes’
This song is from the perspective of two neighbours, who have some kind of petty feud going on, but then they are displaced by war. They are dreaming of their return home, and how their ongoing arguments will likely become water under the bridge after all of the horror and displacement they’ve faced. In fact, they may even become allies in the struggle (“this time now, no ones left to drown, its you and I or none”). The feeling of home, of belonging, and the simple pleasures there have become much more important. The instrumental build up (horns and strings) harkens a haunted military band.
‘Of Nettles and Roses’
‘Of Nettles and Roses’ is a simple love letter of empathy to a fractured, struggling version of a past self. There is both a sharpness and delicate beauty in the unknown, and this song is a brief poem to that sentiment, with a melody that feels cathartic to me.
‘Signals’
I wrote this song when I spent a few months in Brooklyn, a hot humid summer that I treated as a writing residency. My dear old friend Pete Olynciw, who I met in my early 20’s and spent a lot of time touring with, also happened to be spending the summer there. We very much co-wrote this song, in an impromptu reunion of friendship and music. The lyrics are really a vignette of someone packing their bag and getting on the train out of the hot city, to the coast, escaping some kind of strange and maybe toxic relationship.
‘The Color of Earth’
I started out writing this song for my nephew, I was imagining what I would tell him before he was born. But while writing it somehow I started thinking a lot about the first moon landing, and the time leading up to that, and what was happening down on earth during that time. Nations were racing to be the first on the moon, meanwhile people down on earth were just struggling to have basic needs and recognition of their humanity during the civil rights movement. What would we have told a child then? Sadly, upon reflection, it’s not so different than the times we’re in now.
‘August’
I wrote this song for my friend August Golden, who was killed in a shooting at his punk house ‘Nudieland’ in Minneapolis. August was an essential part of my early days of playing music, and he recorded the first Cinder Well EP in our punk house in Portland. August was the most supportive friend. I wanted to write a song for him that he would love. Guest vocals are by CPN Holywell of Twisted Teens.
‘Shadows of Leaves on Red Brick’
The lyrics and production choices in this song are inspired by imagery from Haruki Murakami’s novel ‘The Wind Up Bird Chronicle’. The main character spends a lot of time at the bottom of a well. Sonically and lyrically I wanted to explore what happens in the absolute void of light, a vacuum of total darkness. This song features synthesizers by Dylan Desmond from the band Bell Witch.
Huge thanks to Cinder Well / Amelia Baker for giving us all this opportunity to peek behind the songs.
Cinder Well: Instagram | Website | Facebook | YouTube
Cinder Well on tour (full details here):
Oct 2 Fri – Round Chapel, London
Oct 3 Sat – The Croft, Bristol
Oct 4 Sun – The Cluny 2 Newcastle Upon Tyne
Oct 5 Mon – Oran Mor, Glasgow
Oct 6 Tue – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Oct 7 Wed – New Century, Manchester
Oct 9 Fri – BelloBar, Dublin 8, Ireland
You can also pre-order the Small Prophets Original Soundtrack on vinyl here.
Header image photograph taken by Chelsea “Cheech” Moosekian
Introduction by Paul F Cook
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