POP MUTATIONS PRESENTS…

Cindy
+ J Mahon
+ Simone Antigone
Saturday 29th April
Mono

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

Cindy is a band built around the singing and guitar playing of Karina Gill that she
self-nurtured after finding an abandoned Squier Strat in her San Francisco apartment
basement. Her intrigue soon grew into the band that is Cindy who have found a worldwide
following of their slow-moving, dream-pop world that shrouds Gill’s songs thanks to support
from model independent labels Mt. St. Mtn. [USA] and Tough Love Records [UK].

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“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.