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How much does an artist need to do to leave an impact with their work? If they’re doing it right, the answer seems to be: not much at all. Cinder Well, the dark folk project of singer-songwriter Amelia Baker, for example, stripped everything unnecessary away from the material she played when she stopped by the High Water Mark Lounge this past Sunday. A necessary decision, perhaps, considering she played almost the entire set on her own. But the minimalist presentation—often just a few simple chords strummed on an electric guitar or a phrase picked out on her dobro—allowed the bruised, beating heart of each song to feel much more exposed and tender.
The effect often sent small shudders through the room, like the nervous laughter that spilled out when she introduced “A Scorched Lament,” a devastating hymn from her latest album, Cadence, as a song about “if and when it’s the end of the world, and is it now?” Or the painful ache that swelled up in some fans when she dedicated a jagged new song to August Golden, a musician whom she collaborated with when they were both living in Portland who was killed in a shooting in Minneapolis in 2023. With so little to wade through, musically, we had nowhere to hide from the emotions at play.
Unfortunately for Baker, it also left her with little cover from the hum of the heating system, the squeak of the restroom door in the performance space, and other assorted ambient noises that would otherwise be drowned out by the venue’s usual metal and experimental bookings. Just enough to cause a temporary break from the trance she was inducing in the crowd but not enough to destroy it completely.