Chris Cohen + The Cindys

CHRIS COHEN was always a quiet kid. In fact, this introversion was one reason he began playing music as a toddler—to communicate without speaking to identify with others without the direct representation of words. It has worked, too, with Cohen’s terrific stint in the mighty Deerhoof and his own captivating art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen. Somewhere along that long way, Cohen started writing lyrics. He found that, though it didn’t come naturally, the process offered a new sense of self-discovery and reckoning, a way to see himself and the world from unexpected angles. His three twilit albums of casually complicated pop during the last decade radiated these epiphanies: handling family strife, navigating advancing age, and understanding social woes.

But Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on ‘Paint a Room’, his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. If Cohen’s meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. There is the endless miasma of state violence on the subversively melodious opener “Damage,” the existential exhaustion of modernity on the horn-traced jangle “Laughing”. With ‘Paint a Room’, Cohen’s music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it’s often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud.

https://chriscohen.bandcamp.com

THE CINDYS are a Bristolian outfit united through a shared love of Alex Chilton, The Clean and The Feelies. Birth child of Jack Ogborne (aka Bingo Fury) and with help from Naima Bock, Finlay Burrows and members of Belishas, the group fronts surrealist imagery and infectious hooks at a pace that’ll give you butterflies. Their yet to be released debut album was recorded across the west country, between the vault of the Cornish Bank in Falmouth, Rockfield studios in Wales and the cellar of legendary venue The Louisiana in Bristol throughout 2024. The album includes production and engineering contributions from Joe Jones (Aldous Harding, The Cure, Teenage Fanclub) and Sam Stackpool of Holiday Ghosts, who also features on guitar. The album can be expected later this year.

www.instagram.com/thecindystheband

Presented by Upset The Rhythm.

This is an 18+ event