Cindygod, the project which saw Gauntlet Hair’s Andy Rauworth and Craig Nice reuniting, announced their second effort last month, following their 2018 Demos EP, under the new name with EP2 out August 14th on Fire Talk. The new single, “On Its Side”, follows a similar path as their first offering from the EP. There is an urgency and tensity that runs through the song, seeing the band again distorting the heady combination of new wave-synths and post punk into something peculiarly magnetic. The new single shows Cindygod’s range and the duo’s penchant for creating dramatic, sweeping, songs that flawlessly mingle with Rauworth’s lyrics to convey the raw emotional depths on the EP. Rauworth does on to explain that; “Lyrically, I rarely write in a linear storytelling format. Usually its fragmented thought – whatever crosses my mind in the moment. ‘On Its Side’ is about dealing with an unfortunate reality and the crippling anxiety that followed”

Cindygod announced their new EP with lead single “Rhys”, which takes a darkly sinister route, with Rauworth’s ghostly vocals flickering between Nice’s driving rhythms, culminating in a potent post-punk-meets-new-wave warped reverie. “Rhys” established the new direction Cindygod are taking with confoundingly pummeling rhythms cut with oscillating riffs that lend a sonic unease to the lyrical unease at the heart of the first single. Speaking to the song Rauworth says ““Rhys” is about the altered state of consciousness that I was dealing with at the time of writing. It starts with the lyric “shape-shifter he comes – on a bed of nails”. Sort of an introduction to feeling confused and twisted about being unable to escape what was happening at the time.” 

EP2 is full of familiar yet skewed sonics, simulacrums of dream pop sit atop menacing angular guitars while the occasional yelps from Rauworth agitate between dreamy synths. The sublimely idiosyncratic amalgam of genres on Cindygod’s EP2 points not only to how far the duo have come since disbanding Gauntlet Hair in 2013 but the new EP succinctly soundtracks our ongoing descent into a fully realized dystopia.