Cindy Dall

August 15 - 22, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

***1/2 Cindy Dall

CINDY DALL

(Drag City)
After years spent modeling her anti-fashion concepts for the fanzine Rollerderby and looming in Bill Callahan's shadow as the other member of his band Smog, Cindy Dall has released her first solo album. Despite being untitled and uncredited (except with Dall's name on the inner sleeve), this release spotlights the presence of an astonishingly mature talent. The sound composition changes constantly. Gastr del Sol member Jim O'Rourke's serial piano and Callahan's clanging guitar trade off and transform throughout "Lion Becomes Dragon." The cello and bagpipe noises of "Holland" give way to an off-kilter piano figure. It's as if Brian Eno's first solo albums had been performed by the American woman he could only fantasize about becoming.
Dall's lyrics display human emotions in such stark relief that they reveal the dark mess of impulses underneath, exposing selfishness as a mask for intense vulnerability, desire as the precursor to jealousy, love as a vehicle for fear. The music parallels that aura of inner turbulence; it's as likely to envelop or bury her beautiful voice as to accompany it. The result is that she captures the tremulous inner workings of the mind to a degree conventional singer/songwriter albums couldn't conceive.
-- Dan Booth
(Cindy Dall joins Jim O'Rourke upstairs at the Middle East next Thursday, August 22.)