Ace

Over the past few years, California-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Madison Cunningham has become an industry darling for her virtuosic guitar playing. She’s quietly ubiquitous: opening for Hozier and Harry Styles, appearing on albums by Lucius and Mumford & Sons, performing with Sara Bareilles and Chris Thile, and recording a Buckingham Nicks covers album with Andrew Bird. Her résumé may be highly NPR-friendly, but her work is often genuinely challenging. Her 2022 song “In From Japan” is a solid example of Cunningham’s capabilities as a songwriter and guitarist: a lightly psychedelic, heavily syncopated 7/4 ballad that’s delightfully inside-baseball about the commodification of music. “Watermark/They’re trying to own the image nature carved/Well, metadata won’t support your cause,” she sings. She fully came into her own on her second studio album, the Grammy-winning album Revealer, made in 2022 with a team of industry veterans like Matt Chamberlain, Dan Wilson, and Mike Elizondo.

Shortly after Revealer’s success, Cunningham met Prince’s former guitarist, Wendy Melvoin.  “You have something to say, and you aren’t saying it yet,” Melvoin told her, and played her Martha Wainwright’s confrontational classic “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.” Months later, Cunningham divorced her husband of five years (she’d known him since they were teens in church) and ditched her guitar for a piano-based album indebted to Joni Mitchell’s Blue (she’d previously recorded a cover of “California”). As with Cunningham’s other music, the lush presentation of Ace disguises unexpected chord changes and unconventional time signatures. Here, it’s a perfect strategy for a record about the disintegration of a seemingly perfect relationship. The orchestral arrangements, by Cunningham, yMusic’s Rob Moose, Philip Krohnengold, and Mercury Rev’s Jesse Chandler, often approach Joanna Newsom territory, something Cunningham hasn’t tried before. While Ace is quieter and less accessible than her past work, it’s just as musically sophisticated, with newfound chamber-pop grandeur.

Cunningham is a classic “musician’s musician,” her songs dense with time signature hops and jazzy voicings. Even the earthy acoustic song “Wake” comes with an uneasy melody, with Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold’s offering dissonant harmonies that sound like a worn-out Simon & Garfunkel vinyl wavering in pitch. And there’s a lot of grief and animosity simmering underneath even Ace’s quieter songs.On “Skeletree,” Cunningham teases, “Something’s got to give” over a dense groove, until she finally shouts, “I don’t trust what you say/But I’ve come to lose my faith in everyone” as the trembling strings and electric guitars finally break through.

The album’s central theme is one of untangling yourself from someone else, particularly after anger and betrayal. Cunningham doesn’t go into specifics, but her lyrics are loaded anyway. On “My Full Name,” she sings, “Your brother only shares your family shame/But he doesn’t really know you”; on “Mummy,” she sings, “I’m the oldest of five/The first to be torn/In your mother’s eyes/You were the firstborn”—a line with enough baggage to outfit an entirely different song. “Mummy” sounds like a whimsical lullaby, or one of Regina Spektor’s artsier moments, but it contains some of Cunningham’s most incisive lyrics. First she blames herself—“I never could explain myself, the hurt that I feel, the hurt that I cause”—then she turns the same words against an ex. The truth of what actually happened feels deliberately out of reach, much like a partner can “know every mole and skin tag” (“Take Two”) and still not actually understand their lover.

Ace is the work of a mature, controlled songwriter. The album largely avoids the clichés of the divorce postmortem, earning its more plainspoken lines like, “Some days I hate you so much/I want you back.” Even when the music is more conventional, Cunningham fits in a cutting line—as on the very ’70s soft-rock “Beyond that Moon,” where she sings, “I'd stay under your skin if I were convinced that there were room.” Only lead single “My Full Name”  keeps things a little too simple, lacking the complex sentiments and intricate arrangements that make this album special. Ace rewards close listening; from a stately chamber-folk album, something quietly unrelenting emerges.

Madison Cunningham: Ace

$28 at Rough Trade

$26 at Amazon