*Recommended if you like: Galaxie 500, Algebra Suicide, Mazzy Star, early Low, Linda Smith, Velvet Underground*
Another Country is the fifth full-length album by Cindy, the San Francisco-based group built around the songwriting of Karina Gill. Recorded, like all of its predecessors, in their hometown and with a consistent line-up held over from their previous record (the Swan Lake EP from 2024), it is replete with the poetry of private vistas, eavesdropped dramas and confusing winds. These are classic Cindy concerns, and yet, as always, contain new mystery and charm to somehow feel like quiet revelations each time. Another Country is both opaque in its intentions and specific in its presentation, and as such presents the kind of truth that keeps the listener on the search for answers just out of reach. "The title of this record, Another Country, refers to the James Baldwin novel of that name. The book has a kind of drama that makes sense to me. When I look around, the obvious explanations are not enough. The miasma of feelings and ideas that is supposed to account for it all, doesn't. Baldwin washes past that to longings that begin to explain. Cindy songs come out of the x-rays my particular brain makes out of what I see and experience. What you hear on this record is the result of collaboration with the members of Cindy that transforms that shadowy thing into full color, fully fleshed. Each of them, in music, is sure-footed and unblinking, and making this record together felt like, yes, yes, you see what I mean."