Rising Irish female songwriter and guitarist, Kynsy, releases her new single and video, "Elephant In The Room", alongside her debut EP, Things That Don't Exist.
Ciara Lindsey AKA Kynsy, understands the unique romance of isolation. The freedom of writing, arranging and producing each track herself has given the singer a sense of control and self sufficiency that has enabled her to focus on the minutiae of every song.
The Dublin based artist has developed her own songwriting rules that have given her the ability to experiment, push her own boundaries and avoid being pigeonholed into any one genre. These clutch of racks move from the metallic lurch of a nightclubbing Iggy Pop, the icy cool of St. Vincent to the futurism of Julian Casablancas’ solo output.
Through Kynsy the twenty three year old has constructed her own world, within it, there is a playful juxtaposition between the warmth of pitch perfect pop melodies and the stinging realism of her lyrics. Taking her cue from classic songwriters such as Irving Berlin as well as the abstract puzzles within David Byrne’s lyrics and the detached nonchalance of Damon Albarn, there is a spirited wit to her songwriting that singles her out from her more earnest contemporaries.
Her louche almost rakish delivery is half world-weary lounge singer, half astute soothsayer. Although there is no ironic posturing at play here, there is a deep sincerity to her words that belies the devil-may-care execution.
Lead track “Cold Blue Light” is a velvet-lined boxing-glove that delivers a sucker punch of a chorus and head-spinning hooks which are the artful window dressing to its wry lyrics about fading chancers and their last grasp at relevance. “Elephant in The Room” is a woozy ode to disillusionment that recalls the electro-noir blues of the Chromatics before opening out into a soaring, infectious, sky-larking pop song. The unwinding riff of “Happiness Isn’t a Fixed State”
entangles itself around a jittery cut-up melody that fogs up with damp, heart-scorching melancholy.
The deceptive breezy cheer of “Dog Videos” is undercut by lyrics that define the repetitive churn of modern living, how we are enthralled to a square of light that never dims. With razor-sharp, self-awareness she describes this craving and desperation, the airless doom of time wasted, living within the Youtube/social media rabbit hole. How the constant drag of the endless scroll leads us to nowhere. This blue light fever that we have succumbed to looms large in every track.
These songs may be populated by keenly observed characters - weekend tough boys that slip down side-streets into the monotony of the daily grind, the restless, insecure lover, but the theme that
links them together is the precarious state of our contemporary existence.
Kynsy’s work focuses on the weight of anxiety that bears down on this generation, the yawning blankness of modern living. Within each track there is a reference to the technology that we have absorbed into our lives, how we have readily accepted our fate of monitoring and being monitored, of reducing ourselves to 280 words of text or less. Leaving our life on ‘read’ while we numbly repeat the same actions, achieving the same outcomes, desperately searching for that perfect distraction.
For Ciara, music is the only true escape route, from the spark that Bowie lit within her as a child entranced by his Rebel Rebel rallying cry to the swagger of The Strokes at their most surly, music is the place, the home where you can truly disappear, where you can reinvent yourself into a new existence. This intensity and passion fuels her work and is funnelled into her electrifying live performances where her theatrical presence and raw power has wowed crowds across the country.
This EP is a taste of what is yet to come from an artist who is teasing out questions about modernity, how this generation reacts to the world around them and how there is a pleasure, purpose and power to be found in vulnerability. The kinetic energy of Kynsy brings these subjects to life, this quiet thoughtfulness erupts in a blast of bewitching melodies and a rush of
addictive hooks that burrow their way into your brain, forever stuck on repeat.
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