Margo Cilker's 'Little White Cross' Went to Texas Sad and Came Back Enormous
“You could definitely call it a concept record,” Cilker has said. “If that concept is that I got really sad and went to Texas.” She went to The Bunker, Bruce Robison’s studio in Lockhart, cut the whole thing direct to tape, and put it out on Fossil Records — the label she co-founded this year with Avery Hellman of ISMAY. Her own imprint, her own clock.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Scott Davis’s bass and Lisa Pankratz’s drums are recorded as one instrument sharing one room, and the all-analog chain means nothing is sitting in a grid — the band breathes, drags, and leans. The Spatial Dynamics: Robison and Cilker co-produced, Steve Mazur engineered, Dave McNair mastered, and between them they resisted every temptation to tidy. Two pedal steel players appear — Eric Heywood and Geoff Queen — along with Beth Chrisman’s fiddle and Emily Gimble on piano and organ, and yet the arrangements never crowd the vocal. On “Pauline” there is almost nothing happening, and it is the loudest thing on the record.
Standout Performance
Sarah Cilker, singing harmony with her sister. Sibling blend is a thing you cannot hire, and on a record this bare it does structural work — two voices where one would have sounded alone.
Why It’s Certified
Six of the ten songs are covers or co-writes: the title track is Christy Hays’s, “Ladybug” is Sera Cahoone’s, “Walls” is Tom Petty’s, “Road to Las Cruces” is Ian Tyson’s. Bandcamp Daily’s Zara Hedderman heard “a subtle but essential weariness in her cadence that makes the quietest moments on the record conjure emotional avalanches,” and called “Molly and Me” — a Cilker original — “Cilker’s masterpiece.” KLOF’s Mike Davies: “Forget any future Lucinda talk; this is the here-and-now Margo Cilker, and she’s magnificent.”