Cross Record

Cross Record

Cross Record

Ba Da Bing!

“What is your wish? What do you expect?” Cross Record’s self-titled third album begins with Emily Cross’s disembodied voice intoning from an otherworldly vacuum. In the three years since her last album, Cross has divorced, quit drinking, become a death doula, started the observational podcast What I’m Looking At, and toured and recorded with Sub Pop’s Loma, the trio she formed with Dan Duszynski on drums and Jonathan Meiburg (Shearwater) on guitar / vocals. On Cross Record, she guides the listener like a sonic Virgil, delivering a textured soundscape of meditative curiosity, akin to Low’s Double Negative, Broadcast’s The Noise Made By People and Radiohead’s Kid A. The record’s themes of departure and separation were inspired by changes Cross made in her career. After years of work as a nanny and in customer service, she recently embarked on studies to become a death doula. Similar to the services provided by birth doulas, a death doula helps clients navigate decisions and hardships at the end of life. In her new role, she created a three hour ceremony called a Living Funeral, which guides participants through the rituals of their own deaths. Her work in helping others face their greatest fears inhabits the same space as her art, which has always explored the metaphysical in the everyday. The eerie experience of listening to this record and the unsettling sense of songs slipping from coherent grasp share these same sensibilities. The oddness of these songs is nonetheless honest and truthful, and to understand...

Cross Record

Wabi Sabi

Ba Da Bing!

In 2013, Emily Cross decamped from Chicago to the remote, idyllic town of Dripping Springs, TX, with her husband Dan Duszynski. They rented a ranch that covers eighteen acres, has a chicken coop and is located next to a bird sanctuary. During 60-hour workweeks, split between restaurants, supermarkets and nannying, she absorbed these workaday commonalities and shaped them into her smoky, atmospheric and gripping second album, Wabi-Sabi. Recording together as Cross Record throughout 2014 and into 2015 at the couple’s own Moon Phase Ranch, Wabi-Sabi is a crystallization of Cross’s past music and her passion for art (she studied at the Burren College of Art in Ireland). For example, the scorpions depicted on the cover were found in her bathtub (something she definitely had not experienced before living in Texas) and photographed by her, and she regularly draws and paints in a nook above the studio. The way we interact with and adapt to different and strange environments is a theme that permeates the album. Most recording was done in the early and late hours of the day, with loons cawing in the distance thanks to that bird sanctuary. The ambiance of twilight evenings and orange dawns formed its heart and soul. Cross’s wispy, silvery singing and minimal presentation contrast with the dark intensity of booming drums, thick guitar and destabilized electronics. It can be loud, stirring and unsettling, but also quietly still and serene. Dusynski produced and engineered the record, alongside production from one of Cross’s close friends Theo...

Cross Record

Be Good

Ba Da Bing!

Between melody and discord, Cross Record’s first full-length LP Be Good forges a quiet path through myriad sounds. Strings, clarinet, flute, steel drum, bells, tape distortion and other instrumentation support Emily Cross’s enchanting vocals while allowing for silences to build like black holes. Her lyrics conjure a dark beauty that leaves an effect long after the album has completed.  The record follows a string of self-released recordings by this enterprising 25-year-old. Released on Lay Flat as a 300-press LP in September of 2012, Be Good is getting formal distribution via Ba Da Bing. Along with the last remaining copies of that original pressing—a beautiful, white-vinyl album with poster insert—the label is releasing the album in a limited CD run. Cross has just moved from Chicago to Austin, and is presently at work on her next album, which will be released on Ba Da Bing.