At the start of her new album Ace, Madison Cunningham doesn’t clarify whether she refers to the ace that comes after a king, before a two, or is in the hole—and that obscurity is certainly indicative of her musical psyche right now. Following the release of 2023’s Revealer, Cunningham underwent a period of heartbreak, rebuilding, and new love. Her songwriting adapted to fill those sunken spaces of change, guiding her through high tides and keeping her afloat during. Cunningham’s guitar-driven work has stood at the forefront of her catalogue, blending frisky folk-rock with flicks of jazz—think The Hissing of Summer Lawns, the product of a woman Cunningham has garnered comparisons to since winning a Best Folk Album Grammy two years ago. She’s imparted her skill as a vocalist and guitarist in collaborations with Andrew Bird, Lucy Dacus, Lucius, and Whitney. Ace, however, finds Cunningham at the piano more often, deep in a sporadic, feelings-forward writing process and intuition she chases for fifty-three minutes.
Ace begins with the listless piano of “Shatter Into Place,” drifting like fallen leaves that slot into place on “Shore.” If the interlude paints Cunningham as a wanderer, “Shore” establishes her steady hand: errant keys settle into moody, anchoring chords and exemplify Cunningham’s giftedness for clean, barefaced melodies that rely on nothing but the minimalist production they’re granted. The song’s simplicity gives leave for a sprawling ballad to unfold, holding the complexities of Cunningham’s tense exploration of a breakup. “I’m running out of places I can store this need I have to talk to you,” she sings of residual, beckoning love, broadening the idea later on “Mummy.” Cunningham relents her lapses in communication: “I never could explain myself: the hurt that I feel, the hurt that I cause.” This song houses some of Cunningham’s most candid lyrics to date, like the vulnerable, illogical admission that “some days, I hate you so much I want you back.”
But all of these ballads don’t suggest that Cunningham has abandoned her roots in alt-rock. In fact, some of her loudest songs (“Anything,” “Trouble Found Me”) seem to have culminated in Ace’s third track, “Skeletree,” where she is totally in her element: chugging percussion, a hefty ensemble of guitars, and her signature offbeat melodies. The song moves with an intensity that begs you to groove along, peaking at the bridge, where Cunningham’s voice leaps octaves with deadly accuracy. The fervor of “Skeletree” lies in its repeated question: “Did I get your love at the cost of my mind?” Cunningham gestures at an answer in the extended outro—after it seems the song has ended, the remnants of her background vocals echo like the traces of a memory she can’t outrun. Ace is a wonderful exercise in storytelling that stretches beyond lyricism, weaving meaning into its arrangements as much as its outlined themes. Take the pattering snare of “Break the Jaw,” which conveys anxiety like a pounding heartbeat that pushes Cunningham to confront the pain she has endured and inflicted: This track is perhaps the most exciting arrangement on the album, greeting Cunningham with a wash of strings when she sings, “I may never forgive you, you may never forgive me.” The song oscillates between punchy beats and blooming melodies, but the pith of the song’s anguish lies in Cunningham’s voice alone.
The potential of forgiveness emanates throughout Ace like a hovering question mark—it’s not obtrusive, but glides through each song like a door cracked open. The unconfined spaces of “Goodwill” threaten to detonate any chance of restraint, as Cunningham admits, “My love just seems to spill.” She often writes of a relationship in terms of balance, where whomever holds the onus leaves their partner clinging for control. As put in “Best of Us”: “Who gave up first? That depends on who is lying.” Cunningham often reaches out to the metaphorical when clarity escapes her, like her using “rooms and planets, dying stars, tears flooding the engine of our family car” to describe her relationship’s collapse. But Ace doesn’t dwell on endings, a point Cunningham cemented by releasing “My Full Name” as the album’s first single—it’s a reclamation of identity, a declaration that falling for someone doesn’t mean losing yourself. The song is simple and soft, abundant with the possibility of tomorrow’s love and all of its small tells, like the sweet moment of familiarity when “all your little sayings become mine.” Madison Cunningham doesn’t regret the pain of the past, but lets herself say that “love’s a kind of sorrow worth saving.”
