Today marks the release of Cindy’s fourth album, Why Not Now?, a fleeting but emotionally redolent exploration of Bay Area life from the perspective of band leader, Karina Gill and shaped by the contributions of a rotating cast of musicians from San Francisco’s thriving underground. A series of microcosmic evocations of marcocosmic concepts, Cindy have a knack for the gently profound, big ideas captured in softly intoned tiny vignettes. Why Not Now? might just be their finest moment.
Why Not Now? is available digitally, on CD, and in two vinyl formats – cream vinyl and a highly limited edition of 300 grey vinyl w/ bonus 7” available only via Bandcamp, Tough Love and World of Echo. Additionally, the band’s self-titled, self-released debut album (the one with the cat on the cover) has now been reissued and is also available from today.
Cindy tour the UK for the first time in April. Tour dates below. Tickets available here.
Buy Why Not Now? and Cindy s/t here
“Everyone’s hoping that nobody sees/all our little efforts at dignity”
This last line of the title track from Cindy’s fourth LP Why Not Now? works as a slogan for Karina Gill’s evolving musical vision. Her music is simple out of necessity and introverted in delivery, but the songs contain vivid worlds and are quietly ambitious. With this latest batch, Gill pulled the process of making Cindy music even more inward. “Some of these songs were first recorded as demos alone in my basement. I think that process set the tone for the record…Maybe it set up a kind of starkness,” she says.
Moving on from the fixed quartet that performed the first three albums, Gill worked alongside original keyboardist Aaron Diko to develop the songs and they enlisted players from the ever-blossoming SF pop scene to realise her minimalist vision — members of Flowertown, Telephone Numbers, April Magazine, Famous Mammals, and Sad Eyed Beatniks to name a few. The collective sounds fill out the record perfectly with John Cale-esque viola on ‘August’, lo-fi fairground organs, and a tasteful full-band sound that crops up throughout. ‘A Trumpet on a Hillside’ is the most triumphant Cindy has ever sounded, all ascending chords and a wedding march melody tumbling out of an old synth. Still, some of the best moments are Gill alone, as on ‘Playboy’, just naked guitar and voice, and when the forlorn whistling solo kicks in, it feels like the loneliest star is imploding in a distant galaxy.
While the dream-pop tag is probably still relevant, this isn’t algorithm-fed genre ambience. Gill’s vocal/lyrical presence can be as gently momentous as Leonard Cohen or as intellectually potent as any ’79-’80 Rough Trade post-punk. “In writing a song”, Gill says, ”all the disparate parts of being me momentarily correspond, like car alarms and party music momentarily matching beats.” Cindy’s Why Not Now? is that muffled street symphony inside a passing daydream.
