“Cinder” is an ascent—a journey through cascading waves of emotion, carried aloft by impeccable musicianship and a sparkling sense of undying hope. There’s a resilience to this album—a refusal to descend into despair. Even in its most subdued passages, there is always movement, always breath, always a soft promise: that dawn will come, that beauty still lingers, that hope is an eternal flame. For me, it delivers one of the most uplifting and compositionally rich musical experiences of the year.
