Cindy is to release a new six song E.P called Swan Lake on the 4th October, with All Weekend its lead single, and while a month is a long time to wait- it does wonders for building yet more fervent anticipation for the rest. It’s an utterly beautiful thing and manages with a few carefully chosen ingredients to bake a quite delicious little morsel over its 3 minutes and 42 seconds.
All Weekend is a stripped back delight with guitars meandering in sleepy chords that shiver and jangle throughout and a voice both gentle and hypnotising all at once. There is a Velvets heart that throbs beneath that makes this feel warmly nostalgic yet wonderfully present at the same time, Karina Gill painting evocative melodies that immediately entwine despite their apparent simplicity. This has a natural ability to enchant the listener with its charm and poise and grace – indeed, this feels like music that had to be created in this way. Certainly, this is music that deserves to be felt as much as listened to. It goes beneath the skin and subtly takes hold.
Influences are curious things but I’m almost reminded of some whispered, confessional French-pop demo from an enchanted vault here whose sepia-softened harmonies are deliberate but free too – breathing yet more hushed, hymnal life into the dreamy atmospheres narrated. Though there are clear sonic differences, the curious aphorisms of Sibylle Baier come to mind too – whilst there’s something in its melodic line that strangely recalls Mercury Rev’s Tonite it Shows, to these ears anyway. But really these are things that do not matter: what does matter is how these sounds tap into concepts of memory and time. They draw you intrinsically in. And they keep you.
Drums and percussive details are slow and shivery and the bass works careful runs beneath it all. I love that music like this is being crafted as it proves that in the right hands these simple notes and soporific melodies are all that is needed. Direct but undeniably gentle – the singular soloing entirely at ease with itself- as lyrically, each fragmentary image builds a gathering weight… a quiet burden of beautiful sadness clinging to the skin like a mountain-side mist. I look forward to listening to Swan Lake as a whole come October.
Cindy are magicians. Be ready to succumb to their sun-softened spells.
Written by M.A Welsh (Misophone)
Music | Misophone (bandcamp.com)
