Cindy - s/t (2023 edition)

"Cindy don't do many things loudly, but their seemingly sudden emergence a few years back was quite the jolt, their Free Advice LP doing for the current San Fran scene what the Big Supermarket record did for Melbourne a year or two back - ie a totemic outta-nowhere DIY statement of rare vision. As it turns out, though, it's not quite without precedent, since there was actually a self-released debut record from 2018, first pressed in tiny number and initially not moving much further than their immediate locale . A few years on and now trading for inflated prices on the second hand market, Tough Love are re-issuing in order to shine a little light on the band's first steps. These ten tracks display the ruminative formation of the minimal indiepop sound perfected on Free Advice, skeletons of the same ideas with a little less flesh on dem bones, nonetheless struck with a naive wonder, like you're afforded the opportunity to hear the band stumbling upon their own charms in real time. And that is 100% the appropriate word here - charm, a quality perfectly captured in that front cover, too. It's not possible to overstate how endearing this music is, so independent is it of outside influence and free of self-consciousness. Is this the birth of the new Paisley Underground? Or maybe something better...