Self-Revelation on Madison Cunningham’s ‘Revealer’
Madison Cunningham writes the type of songs most often heard in coffeehouses, yet her lyrics deserve more than a hushed crowd straining to comprehend her phantasmic rushes of vulnerability.
The album “Revealer” by indie pop singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham was released on September 9th, 2022. The album transcends its name; it is a journey of antithetical self-discovery in which Cunningham blatantly confesses her faults and flights in prescient poetics. Cunningham is an unironic Sheryl Crow, an Aimee Mann turned up ten decibels, which makes her all the while incomparable and uniquely resonant.
As Cunningham sings in her song “Collider Particles,” her music stems from something “born in the wrong time.” A California native and daughter of a pastor, Cunningham started learning guitar at age seven and broadened her musical passions by singing in the church choir. By high school, Cunningham discovered the artists from the eras in which she locates the origins of her style, such as Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan— artists who sing in similar strains of cutthroat honesty.
Although a lesser-known name, Madison Cunningham seems to be on an assured trajectory. Cunningham’s freshman record, “Who Are You Now,” was nominated for “Best Americana Album” during the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, and she even opened two New York City shows for Harry Styles last October.
On her sophomore album, Madison Cunningham reveals her truth right from the first guitar riff— Cunningham's trademark— to the last. The opening track, “All I’ve Ever Known,” a song about the complexities of tour life, introduces “Revealer” as an album full of jazz-infused melodies. Cunningham has a dualistic singing voice— a soft tenor swaying through each chord and forcing its way through instrumental barriers of her own invention. In each isolated harmony and wailing echo, she establishes a pattern that reappears on tracks such as “Anywhere” and “Hospital”.
Most of “Revealer” is contrived of trippy reverb, complex time signatures, classic guitar riffs, and Cunningham’s enthralling vocal range. “Sunshine Over the Counter” masters her folk-rock recipe. A chorus of woodwinds and dissonant harmonies emphasizes the barefaced lyricism: “Knife in the toaster / Didn't know it could kill her / Living high / To not feel low.” The song is casually hummable, with optimistic inflections that run contrary to the depressive struggles the song illustrates, causing the chorus to feel like a shrug of the shoulders— Cunningham accepts her faults and moves on.
Cunningham may not feel she is in control of her life, with her doubts displayed on the track as “Who Are You Now,” but she regains control in her music. An instrumentally chaotic song, “In From Japan” is grounded in the simplicity of a repetitive chorus that consists solely of the potent statement, “No one’s holding you back now.” Against a steady bass and a cacophony of flourishing piano, wailing riffs, and swelling strings, Cunningham speaks to an age that is overthinking-prone and success-obsessed. Cunningham utilizes personal criticisms and sweeping generalizations to adequately translate the instrumental complexities that play through the chaos of everyday living.
However, when Cunningham is unexpected, she comes off as unafraid to learn new musical languages along with her listeners. On the track “Your Hate Could Power A Train,” Cunningham’s rush of vocals overrules a steady guitar strum which is quintessentially classic rock, but her vocals are not forceful enough to express the full scope of her supposed discontent. Cunningham, who can usually punch a listener with a sentiment in the first thirty seconds, trades charm for risk. Yet, the tune is haunting enough to recharm the listener with the angelic bridge that imposes itself before the final minute of the song.
A soft, tear-jerking ballad encompassing Cunningham’s ethereal tonality, “Life According to Raechel” resembles Madison Cunningham’s earlier work: a catalog consistenting of soft acoustic covers and slow-moving melodies. The sentimental story, embodied in the opening lines, “Once your girl, I’m always your girl,” deepens the emotional reaction that Cunningham evokes with her craft, as hesitant string melodies fully encompass the grief of losing a loved one, proving that Cunningham has only evolved upon her typical methods.
“Revealer” is a pure-of-heart album of memoirist introspection that you can now listen to on any platform you use to stream music.