No summer from Cinder Well

THANKS to Devon Leger of Hearth Music for the news that Cinder Well (Amelia Baker) will release her album of 'doom folk' No summer on 24 July. From California, she is now based in Ennis, Co. Clare, and studying Irish music at the University of Limerick, in consequence of meeting the Dublin folk band Lankum.

There are some powerful echoes of Appalachia among the nine tracks on the album - especially the first, the unaccompanied 'Wandering boy'. 'The cuckoo' is essentially the same song as Clarence Ashley's, but the setting here makes it a different experience. And 'Queen of the earth, child of the skies' is Edden Hammons's West Virginia version of the tune known in Ireland as 'The blackbird'. Much more about her music is on the Hearth Music website.