The LA-based writer and musician Claire Cronin's work is generally based around ideas of folk horror and spiritual dread. Her 2020 book Blue Light Of The Screen is about her obsession with horror movies, which also tends to come through in her music. But Cronin's latest song, is a gorgeous lullaby about how she'll miss the world once it ends.
Cronin recorded her upcoming album The Bruise with husband and frequent collaborator Ezra Buchla, formerly of the Mae Shi and Gowns, and it's got assists from people like Julia Holter and Deerhoof's John Dieterich. We've already posted lead single "Black Water." "Before The End Of Time" has Cronin on voice and guitar, Buchla on strings and processing, and Mark Wessels on musical saw. It's a slow, lovely torch song. I guess you could describe it as doom-folk, but I think it's a little more classicist that that. Here's what Cronin says about the song and the crowd-sourced video:
This one is about feeling deep nostalgia, grief, and a fear of apocalypse in a world that’s on the edge of ruin. I was thinking about paranoia and delusion, and remembering walks I took when I lived in east Hollywood, where helicopters were always circling.
When I sing the chorus, I like to imagine I’m the ghost of an old crooner like Frank Sinatra, singing to the victims of a shipwreck. At the end of the song, my sense of longing is too intense and I ask to be taken out of time.
To make this video, I put out a call on social media for contributions, asking people to send me short clips of things they think they’ll miss at the end of time, the end of their lives, or the end of the world — however they wished to interpret that. I chose from among those entries, added a few of my own, and then edited it all together. I tried to make the transitions match the movements of the song.
I found it poignant that there was a lot of repetition in what people sent me — so many coastlines, bodies of water, skies, trees, children, animals, and shimmering lights.
Check it out below.
The Bruise is out 10/9 on Orindal Records/A Moth Object.
