Today sees the release of Cindy’s third record 1:2, recorded during lockdown in their hometown of San Francisco, and finds itself born amidst one of those creatively fertile moments the Bay Area seems to conjure every few cycles. SF is full of great music right now – 1:2 might be its greatest record to emerge from this current milieu of artists.

Cindy is a band built around the singing and guitar playing of Karina Gill. She became a musician only recently, having sat on the sidelines while ex-partners and friends made their stabs at it. Gill describes a chance encounter with an abandoned Squire Strat left in the basement by a previous tenant, “mummified in electrical tape with the remnants of a burrito on the head stock”, that led her to begin carefully strumming her way through simple chords and making her own songs. After one interesting self-released LP, still finding their footing, the band made the masterful and buzzed-about Free Advice, which went from a limited cassette on local SF label Paisley Shirt to vinyl pressings on both Tough Love and Mt St Mtn.

Cindy’s third LP arrives in quick succession, the quietly devastating 1:2. Jesse Jackson on bass, Simon Phillips on drums and Aaron Diko on keyboards weave the perfectly thin web behind Gill’s slow Velvety strums and murmured melodies. The rhythm section brings the crude flow, while the keys add subtle and surreal counterpoint to the withering world Gill depicts in her lyrics. “Songs tie together seemingly disparate things by the logic of mood,” Gill tries to explain. This isn’t dream-pop sunshine bliss; half-closed black drapes hang on the window where the narrator stares into the middle distance. “Sometimes you say you’re feeling small/You plan all day for your own funeral”, she intones in Party Store. Gill has a way of halting her phrasing that makes it feel like her thoughts are gently tumbling into the abyss. It’s this unsettling quality mixed with the hazy atmosphere that makes Cindy’s new LP 100% addicting and the perfect antidote to comfort listening. – Glenn Donaldson, 2021

The album is available on DL, CD & a few different versions on vinyl LP – a hand numbered Dinked version on yellow vinyl which includes a bonus 7″ with two exclusive songs alongside a six postcard set, a rain grey vinyl press with a signed print from Record Store, and a standard blue pressing. Our friends over at Mt St Mtn are handling release duties in the US.

Buy/stream 1:2 HERE