Artist: Helene Cronin
Album: Old Ghosts & Lost Causes
Label: Self-released
Release Date: 10.11.2019
There’s some of Gretchen Peters’ darkness and incisive poetry in Helene Cronin’s terrific debut, and that alone should be more than enough for singer-songwriter fans to give Cronin their attention. Cronin is a wordsmith who pulls no punches. Some songs may make you uncomfortable but leave you marveling at her songwriting just the same. She actually delivers balance in songs like the uplifting “Humankind” but her darker ones will likely be more memorable. Even though this is her first full-length CD, she is no newcomer: she’s been performing and writing for 15 years, having issued two EPs before delivering these 11 songs on Old Ghosts & Lost Causes. Matt King produced the album that features guitarist Kenny Vaughan, Byron House and other top Nashville session players.
Listening to just a few tracks makes it rather easy to see why Cronin was a New Folk winner at the renowned Kerrville Folk Festival in 2018, a platform that often leads to emerging singer-songwriters making full albums. She begins with the first single, “Careless with a Heart,” about how the heart is so fragile and resilient at the same time. She first steps toward the dark side with the blues-imbued “Mean Bone,” colored by Vaughan’s guitar and Heidi Newfield’s harmonica. It’s a co-write with her novelist daughter, Alex, contemplating what if someone did have a mean bone as opposed to the usual use of the term. Here’s an excerpt: “And if God could open Adam’s chest and remove a rib/He could’ve done that for my daddy but He never did/Daddy changed his name, left his home/Tried to leave behind all the pain he’d known/But he never could get away from his own mean bone.”
Other highlights include her detailed observations and stories of a host of characters in “Riding the Gray Line,” the bliss found “In a Kiss,” which also best represents the extensive range of her voice; the touching, mournful “The Last Cowboy,” and the evocative “God Doesn’t,” to which owes the “Lost Causes” portion of the title – “I know it ‘cause every time I give up on me God doesn’t.” The stark imaginative six minute ballad “Ghost” is narrated from the perspective of a dead husband that Cronin performs completely solo. It’s clearly the album’s tour de force with lines like “when I lie beside her, I only made her cold.”
Songwriters and musicians like Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines praise Cronin for good reason. It’s rare when a debut is this good. But then again, Cronin is no newcomer as you’ll discover when listening to her well-crafted songs, some of which come from unexpected perspectives.
—Jim Hynes
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