Plain Letters

Plain Letters (Reimagined)

At just 25 years-old, Madison still has an entire lifetime only just beginning to stretch out before her. But she’s been making music for years. The multi-instrumentalist is most at home on guitar, which she first picked up at age 7, but also writes on piano.
 As its title suggests, Revealer—the new album by Madison Cunningham—is full of confessions, intimations, and hard truths the Los Angeles singer-songwriter-guitaristmight rather have kept to herself. It’s a warts-and-all self-portrait of a young artist who is full of doubt and uncertainty, yetbursting with exciting ideas about music and life, who has numerous Grammy nominations but still feels like she has far to go, who turns those misgivings into songs that are confident in their idiosyncrasies. It’s also a rumination on music as a vehicle for such revelations, what’s gained and what’s lost when you put words to your innermost feelings.“There’s a sense of conflictabout revealing anything about yourself—not just what to reveal, but whetheryou should reveal anything at all,” she says. “When you have to vouch for yourself and present a true picture of who you are, that can get confusing very quickly.This record is a product of me trying to find myself and my interests again. I felt like somewhere along the way I had lost the big picture of my own life.”