df concerts presents: Madison Cunningham

14+ (under 16s with an adult)

Depending on the game, an Ace can be the highest or lowest card, zero or infinity. A breakup
feels similar—one path crumbles, while all others remain infinitely possible. How do you writeabout heartbreak when you’re going through it? Ace, Grammy award-winner Madison
Cunningham’s third record for Verve Forecast, tracks every part of it: falling out of love, havingyour heart broken, and then falling in love again. It’s about betrayal and betraying yourself. It isa stunning record and some of Cunningham’s best songwriting to date. It showcases her at theheight of her powers.Ace had to simmer. It follows Revealer, a darkly funny portrait of an artist that won Cunninghamher Grammy. Cunningham has long been an artist’s artist, having been working as a songwriterfor over a decade. “Early on, I was advised against going to college and going straight to where the music was happening,” says Cunningham, “Instead, I learned by listening and observing
some of my favorite artists at work.” On Revealer, she cemented herself as not only a favorite musician of collaborators like John Mayer and Robin Pecknold, but also as a critically lauded artist with a deep fan base.

Ace builds off of the success of Revealer, but it is a different record. A slow burn until it wasn’t. It follows a period of writer’s block. Of not knowing how to quite put feelings into words. And the way to put feelings into words was to wait. On Revealer and her debut album Who Are You Now, Cunningham says that she was writing songs about heartbreak, but they weren’t about her heartbreak. They were sketches, observations. Cunningham wanted Ace to be emotions first. Heartbreaking and lush and bold. She wanted it to be candid but to also maintain autonomy over her story, for it to always feel like it belonged to her and no one else. It felt scary to write music like that, almost impossible. And it took months for it to click. But then it did. “I shattered and became a new shape,” she says. She moved apartments. The summer was ending. She sat down and writing suddenly felt easy again. She wrote almost every song on Ace in the month of August, 2024.
Each song on Ace is a direct address. It is non linear, but it does have a clear beginning and end, as breakups do. “You think you’re on the verge of true healing but something scares you,” she says, “And you have to start all over.” So the songs are love letters and goodbyes. They ask questions that are impossible to answer. “How do I forgive myself, liberate myself, love myself?”
Cunningham shares. It is fitting that one of those songs is called “My Full Name.” It is one of the first songs she wrote for the record, initially written for someone Cunningham was falling in love with. But then it morphed. It became its own little world. “I love it when you say my full name,” sings Cunningham in the song’s opening moments. Then the lyrics grow more impressionistic.

Water leaks are compared to the city Berlin. Images of wildflowers and a plane crash. The
composition is sparse: it’s Cunningham and her piano. Woodwinds and soft brushes of
percussion.
Cunningham rose to fame as a songwriter and a guitarist. She’s collaborated as a guitarist and as a vocalist with countless artists: Lucy Dacus, Remi Wolf, Mumford & Sons, and Andrew Bird, among others. Her guitar is perhaps what she is best known for. On Ace, which Cunningham serves as co-producer, she wanted to ever so slightly move away from that notion. Sonically, the piano is in the foreground. And Cunningham’s piano playing here is beautiful. Look no further than opener “Shatter Into Form,” and how it unspools so gently into “Shore.” The piano here is soft and searching. It feels like swimming in the sea in August. Like looking out the window of a train in June. “Nervous girl / In the third person / How words escape her,” sings Cunningham. It’s a line that is as playful as it is reflective. All of it swirls together, creating a stunningly intimate portrait of a woman growing and rebuilding.

The record also features a collaboration from Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, who lends his vocals to “Wake.” Pecknold sings alongside Cunningham, as she plays intricate finger picked guitar. Her bandmates are musicians she has worked with for years, and they help sharpen her vision. They follow her lead with upright bass and stomps. It is wooly and warm. “Wake,” like the rest of Ace, is an ensemble effort, produced alongside Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Rilo Kiley,
Bahamas, Peach Pit). “She’s a force of nature,” says Lackritz of their collaboration, “An unreal
musical talent. When we worked, we would work all day. We would start a song and finish it that
evening. We fueled off of each other’s energy. It felt like a snowball of energy and creativity.”
“I wanted it to feel like a mountain peak,” says Cunningham, “I wanted Ace to feel like a
mountain we built together.” “Best of Us,” Ace’s final track, might be the summit. It is some of
Cunningham’s most exciting writing, her most poetic wordplay. “The kingdom has fallen,” she
sings, “two bedroom apartment / holding up the broken arm.” Ace is a record that feels alive and
lush in all the ways Cunningham hoped for when she started writing. It is a record of mastery
and honesty. Cunningham loves every single song on it. You can tell.

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