Cindy frontman Scott Brown was probably right to feel surprised. Looking out at the crowd thrashing and moshing inside Christchurch’s Space Academy, he expressed disbelief at the impressive turnout for the Auckland — West Auckland — band’s first-ever show in the city. “I thought no one would turn up,” he admitted between songs, his hands taped to the mic stand.
Cindy have always been that local band. You know the one: the “unpretentious, if-you-know-you-fucking-know, resolutely DIY band that rewards discovery,” as we wrote about them in 2023.
Emerging out of their West Auckland slumber to play blistering set after set across Tāmaki’s venues and bars for years, they’re firmly established in New Zealand’s biggest city’s live music scene. But Christchurch? And Dunedin? Those were new frontiers for Cindy last week, when they travelled down to Te Waiponamu for the first time to perform two shows.
The tour was in support of new single – their first proper release in two years – “Big Summer Blowout”, which blows the listener away with the band’s usual full force. The slice of no-nonsense garage-punk assaults the ears with layers of fuzzy feedback, influenced by Brown listening to a lot of England’s trippy sonic psychonauts Spacemen 3.
“I left the house to go and get groceries and when I got back Gloria [Florence] had written and demoed the song already,” Brown explains. “The lyrics are from Gloria’s perspective, about how I have mastered a technique about getting cheaper groceries…”
“The music came together pretty quickly… Completing the song and having it 100% finished is a great feeling. We have always struggled to get to the mixing stage right – hence our slow output of releasing songs. Gloria has brought a very simplified way of how to write. I think we have finally found our feet.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
If this is Cindy finally finding their feet, they’ve joined forces with the ideal label to potentially take them to a wider audience.
At the same time as unleashing “Big Summer Blowout” last month, the band announced their signing to Sunreturn, the Tāmaki label that took electronic producer MOKOTRON all the way to arguably surprising Taite and Aotearoa Music Awards wins.
View this post on Instagram
It’s good company, clearly, for Cindy to keep. But then again the punk quartet – Brown and Florence are joined by James King and Mitchell Ihle in the lineup – have always aligned themselves with people who also approach music with a distinctly do-it-yourself mentality.
While others chased bumper streaming figures or worked on polished records, Cindy’s members saved up their money and took time off work in order to tour the independent venues of Japan not once but twice, in 2018 and 2023.
Image: Cindy perform in Japan Credit: Hunter Blair
““It stood out to me because no one else in the country played the way they did. Sure, there were noisier bands. There were more talented bands. There were bands with a better ‘look’ — but no one could do what Cindy could. I never understood why until I got to Japan,” as photographer Hunter Blair said when capturing the band’s second hectic Japan trip for Rolling Stone AU/NZ.
Because whether it’s at a sweaty Auckland basement show or a support slot for King Brothers in Osaka, Cindy are a proper live music band. By the end of their Christchurch set, the crowd was in a demanding mood. “One more tape! One more tape!” some of them shouted at Brown, imploring him to secure his connection with the mic stand. They wanted more frenzy, more racket. There’s a reason Cindy recorded their new single live and direct to tape (with the help of Daren McShane at Earwig Studios) — they can never lose that loose, anarchic streak that drives their shows.
Cindy’s “Big Summer Blowout” is out now via Sunreturn.
