Something of an underground supergroup, The Cindys forms an outlet for some of the most direct and accessible output from its performers.
Words: Marty Hill
Fronted by Bingo Fury's Jack Ogborne and featuring members of Belishas as well as Naima Bock, who has released two stunning folk records since departing Goat Girl, you could think of Bristol newcomers The Cindys as something of an underground supergroup. Their debut record certainly delivers on those credentials, packing a bunch of widely-sourced ambition into a short collection of songs bursting with melodic charm.
The three singles that the group released in anticipation of the record do a really good job of letting you know what The Cindys are all about. Opener 'Eternal Pharmacy' draws from the kind of off-kilter power pop that made Orange Juice and The Pastels two of the most influential bands of the 1980s. 'Dry TV' and 'Isaac's Body' play off the tension between stop-start guitar dynamics and melodic pull in a way that brings to mind the likes of Beat Happening. 'Eternal Pharmacy' is perhaps the standout track of the album. A bright and earnest love song that brings the best out of Ogborne and Bock's intertwined vocals, it's the song that the band say best encapsulates the ethos of the project and it's not hard to see why. It's really exhilarating to hear two songwriters who've released some fairly attention-demanding stuff in recent years front songs as immediate as this.
Under the Bingo Fury moniker, Ogborne has experimented with a volatile range of atmospheres and instrumentation: his songs on that project are as likely to introduce themselves with a maniacal attack of horns as they are a deadpan confession over soft pianos. The Cindys feel like they work quite differently. You can trace everything here back to a very similar point of inception, but that's not to say that there's not a healthy level of variance across the album.
It's almost as if the band started with this collection of clean and infectious power pop structures and spent the time between writing and releasing them trying to blow them apart. Vocal melodies tail off into deadpan spoken word before they become too comfortable, blasts of distortion interrupt before the jangle of the guitars could begin to tire and the much folkier 'Marble Lobby' even momentarily comes to a complete stop halfway through. Whilst it's much more direct stuff than perhaps any of the band's members have been involved in, and certainly more head-on than anything put out under Bingo Fury, there's a clear acknowledgement that great pop songs cannot be perfect. It's an outstanding way to introduce The Cindys into the world.
'The Cindys' releases on Breakfast Records this Friday, 7th November.
No comments:
Post a Comment