Grammy winner singer / songwriter Madison Cunningham is currently on tour promoting her latest album, ‘Ace.’ In a unique twist, she’s playing the new album, written in response to a divorce from a young marriage, in near entirety. Cunningham, along with multi-instrumentalist Jesse Chandler, is bringing these emotionally charged and beautiful songs to intimate venues across the globe. Tuesday night they stopped in Pittsburgh at Mr. Smalls. The repurposed church was the perfect venue for the talented duo, and made for night not of mourning but of celebration and transformation.
Chandler and Cunningham walked out onto the low-lit stage with little fuss and started playing. Both sitting down to start, they were each semi-obscured behind fake rocks and tall grass, only their faces fully visible. They opened with the first two songs from ‘Ace,‘ the beautiful and foreboding instrumental “Shatter Into Form I,” followed by “Shore.” The moving songs were a good way to open the set. “Shore” especially showcased Cunningham’s stunning vocal range and Chandler’s equally stunning musicality right from the start. Next, they bled into “Take Two,” via Cunningham’s melodic oohs and aahhs.
One got the sense they were going to play the entire album in order, which would likely draw few complaints from the audience. It’s a very strong album, no doubt her best and most mature. But she interrupted the streak with, “All I’ve Ever Known,” from 2022’s ‘Revealer.’ It would be one of only four songs not off Ace for the entire hour and a half show.
The next song, “Skeletree,” was where things started to get even more interesting. Cunningham played it slower than the album version, the piano and chorus even more haunting. Then she stood up, picked up her guitar, and started playing the song from the opening. It was one of the many moments of the night where the pair played around with the arrangements and tempo of the songs, clearly having fun with them.
In her interview with CleveRock in advance of the show, Cunningham mentioned how she and Chandler were touring the album as duo instead of with the full band. Going into the show, it was still a bit of a mystery how they were going to pull it off. But they did! The pair filled the room, and thanks to Chandler’s looping of the woodwind instruments and constant octopus-like hands moving from one instrument to the other, they accomplished the task of covering the sound of these songs with ease. Chandler simultaneously playing the Mellotron with one hand and the flute with the other was a bit mind boggling, and yet his face seemed as calm as ever.
They successfully captured every song with such rich detail that fans didn’t miss the full band at all. It even made for a more intimate set, which was fitting, given the nature of the songs. The combination of Cunningham’s lyrics and voice mixed with Chandler’s multi-instrumental abilities pair perfectly.
But make no mistake, Cunningham is no musical slouch, both her guitar and piano playing were impressive. She made what one might expect to be a quiet song like “Golden Gate (On and On)” into a jam session, her acoustic guitar filtered through distortion pedals. It was a standout song amongst standout songs. The mini jams on the upbeat “Break the Jaw,” added some spice to the set as well, Cunningham looking like a punk rocker disguised as a folk singer.
According to opener Sam Weber, all the shows on the tour have been seated except for the Pittsburgh show, and it made the energy that much more alive. But the crowd was also reverent, staying eerily silent during even the quietest of moments. The front row leaned forward, over the front of the stage, holding on her every word during songs like “My Full Name.”
Since pretty much the entire set consisted of songs from ‘Ace,’ as the name of the tour would imply, some of the other songs were a bit of a fun surprise in the set. As a person who has only come to Cunningham’s music since she released ‘Ace,‘ I would have been fine with all new songs, but she had to play some of the more well-known songs from her previous two albums. And, to be fair, they did win her a Grammy.
The encore consisted of two of these songs, in fact. “Life According to Raechel” and “Song in My Head,” which were crowd pleasers to be certain, the ones the long-time fans were also wanting to hear. Placing these two love songs at the end of the set, even separated from her emotionally raw songs, almost undercut the potency of the earlier songs. But instead it put a more upbeat ending on things, taking the sting of the break-up album away and leaving fans with a happier tone, perhaps also allowing the audience to feel the effects of the transformation of Cunningham from traditional folk singer to something of her own making.
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