For Grace Cummings, growing up may actually be a process of returning.
Not returning to a particular place or moment, but to the person who existed before the accumulated weight of other people’s expectations began obscuring her instincts.
“The realization that I’ve had is that growth—or mine at least—in getting older and becoming more yourself is actually returning back to what you were like when you were a child,” Cummings says. “I think that a lot of what I’m doing now in my life is for little Grace.”
That idea runs through Bloodhorse!, Cummings’ latest album, recorded in Topanga Canyon with GRAMMY-nominated producer Jonathan Wilson. Following the acclaim surrounding 2024’s Ramona, the record ventures into an enormous, dramatic world where pain, imagination and self-acceptance exist alongside one another rather than resolving neatly.
Cummings isn’t particularly interested in pretending she’s reached some enlightened destination.
“I don’t think I have or ever will reach the ‘liberated place,’” she admits, “but it feels nice to get a little closer.”
Imagination has been essential to that movement.
Cummings describes fantasy not simply as an artistic device but as something closer to a survival mechanism. She invokes Gene Wilder’s famous invitation into a world of pure imagination and talks enthusiastically about discovering research connecting mental imagery and the experience of pain.
The idea fascinated her: that imagination might not merely distract us from suffering but actively compete for space with it.
“I think it’s always been my survival mechanism,” she says, “and I’m so grateful for it.”
That makes the heightened universe of Bloodhorse! less of an escape from reality than another way of illuminating it.
For Cummings, that’s what art has always done.
“Painting, theatre, sculpture, writing… it takes something out of the basement and puts it under a dramatic light. Doesn’t it?”
Bloodhorse! places plenty under that light.
Recorded in Topanga Canyon, the album reunited Cummings with an environment where she says she feels unusually comfortable being herself. Much of that freedom came through working with Wilson, whom she describes as both “an absolute legend” and someone capable of occupying seemingly countless musical roles across the record.
“He plays the role of a thousand people on this record,” she says.
But perhaps the more significant evolution happened internally.
Cummings’ previous album, Ramona, received widespread acclaim, but it was the response to “A Precious Thing” that helped shift her understanding of autobiographical songwriting. Hearing listeners attach their own experiences to something originating in hers complicated the fear that writing intimately was inherently self-centered.
“The ‘personal’ really isn’t about you,” she says. “It’s about it connecting with others.”
That realization gave her permission to move closer to subjects she once might have protected.
“If I have experienced something, I’m certainly not the first person to have experienced it, and if at least one person felt connection or understood or heard from this record, I’d feel that that would be what success means to me.”
It’s a striking definition of success for an artist whose voice can make intimate emotions sound almost mythological.
Even the title Bloodhorse! feels enormous: physical, violent, beautiful and untamed. Cummings pushes back slightly against interpreting the album as a straightforward story of transformation, but the image captured something essential about the universe she’d created.
It represented “that big, vast, technicolour world,” she explains—“being both trapped in it and free within it.”
That contradiction might be the album’s most revealing quality.
Freedom doesn’t necessarily mean escaping the things that hurt. Self-acceptance doesn’t mean suddenly liking everything about yourself. Imagination doesn’t require denying reality.
Sometimes liberation can simply mean recognizing which voices inside your head were never yours in the first place.
Asked what she left behind between Ramona and Bloodhorse!, Cummings points toward “other people’s opinions that I had adopted and mistaken for my own.”
She doesn’t reject her previous work because of that. Every record, every song and every version of herself was truthful to the moment in which it existed.
But Bloodhorse! feels different.
“This record is a step into the direction of what I’m actually like.”
And perhaps that is why Cummings’ fantastical world ultimately feels so personal. The theatricality isn’t there to hide the truth. It magnifies it.
The little girl, the adult, the pain, the fantasy, the voices inherited from other people and the voice slowly emerging underneath them all coexist inside the same technicolor landscape.
Cummings isn’t claiming to have escaped any of it completely.
She’s simply trying to move forward.
“I hope that I get one of my feet out of the past,” she says, “and have both feet just going forward. With my eyes looking up.”
Bloodhorse! is described as a journey from pain into a “technicolor world” of imagination and radical self-acceptance. What did you have to confront before you could actually reach that more liberated place?
Myself, mostly. I think. It’s funny… or ironic really, the realization that I’ve had is that growth (or mine at least) in getting older and becoming more yourself is actually returning back to what you were like when you were a child.
I think that a lot of what I’m doing now in my life is for little Grace… I don’t think I have or ever will reach the “liberated place”, but it feels nice to get a little closer.
There’s something powerful about the idea of escaping pain through imagination rather than simply overcoming it. Has fantasy always functioned as a survival mechanism for you, both personally and creatively?
Absolutely. As Gene Wilder sang: If you want to view paradise, simply look around and do it… in a world of pure imagination. I think it’s always been my survival mechanism, and I’m so grateful for it.
Incidentally, I was researching neuroplasticity and found out that the centers in your brain that create pain are the same used to create mental imagery… if you’re disciplined enough you can reach this kind of competitive neuroplasticity and interrupt or block the pain by using your ability to imagine… I thought that was so amazing.
The phrase “radical self-acceptance” suggests something more difficult than conventional ideas of self-love. What did accepting yourself radically require you to stop apologizing for?
Who knows. A lot… but that’s not a unique experience and I wouldn’t want to think or pretend that it was. I don’t think I’m radical at all and I certainly haven’t accepted myself fully. That’s ok.
I think what I have realized is that sharing some of the more difficult things in my life in my writing isn’t actually all about me, which is what I was afraid of in the past. Whilst it is a way that I can process stuff I can’t seem to say, it’s about other people.
If I have experienced something, I’m certainly not the first person to have experienced it, and if at least one person felt connection or understood or heard from this record, I’d feel that that would be what success means to me.
You recorded Bloodhorse! in Topanga Canyon with Jonathan Wilson. How did being physically removed into that particular environment affect the emotional atmosphere of the record?
I love Jonathan so much and I love Topanga so much. It feels like home away from home and Jonathan is an absolute legend.
I feel very much myself there… and Jonathan is an incredible person to be around to encourage you to be just that. He’s also one of the most talented people I have ever come across… he plays the role of a thousand people on this record.
Jonathan has worked with artists like Father John Misty, Angel Olsen and Margo Price, all of whom have very distinct musical identities. What did he recognize in your own artistic language that helped you push it somewhere new rather than simply refining what was already there?
I don’t know! You’d have to ask the good man himself!
Ramona received significant acclaim in 2024. Did having a record resonate that strongly give you more confidence going into Bloodhorse!, or did it create a new kind of pressure to understand what people expected from you?
I’m not sure… maybe a little of both. I think that “A Precious Thing” gave me the clarity I spoke of before.
The response and stories of connection people had with that song really made me realise that the “personal” really isn’t about you, it’s about it connecting with others. That gave me the confidence to lean more into that I guess.
The title Bloodhorse! immediately feels physical, wild and almost mythological. What does that image represent to you within a record so concerned with transformation?
I don’t really think it’s about transformation… But the title is certainly all of those things and is why I thought it was the right title for the record.
It encapsulated that big, vast, technicolour world… being both trapped in it and free within it.
If Ramona captured one version of who you were, what parts of that person did you consciously—or unconsciously—leave behind while making Bloodhorse!?
Maybe other people’s opinions that I had adopted and mistaken for my own.
I don’t think anything I’ve made has been “untrue” to me, ‘cause it’s true at the time. But I think this record is a step into the direction of what I’m actually like.
There’s an interesting contradiction between escaping into imagination and arriving at a more authentic acceptance of reality. Did creating a more fantastical musical world ultimately allow you to become more truthful about yourself?
That’s how the world feels to me… and I think that dramatic and fantastical are fair words to use… but that’s what art is, in all forms…
Painting, theatre, sculpture, writing… it takes something out of the basement and puts it under a dramatic light. Doesn’t it?
Once you’ve made a record about escaping pain and reaching radical self-acceptance, where do you go from there? Has Bloodhorse! changed what you now believe music is capable of doing for you?
I hope that I get one of my feet out of the past and have both feet just going forward. With my eyes looking up.
