Cindy G – Moonshiner’s Daughter
Music is something that’s very hard to describe without using a lot of recycled terminology. A song is beautiful, a rhythm is smooth; none of these comments can really give a record that genuinely moves us justice. I’ve spent most of my life looking to music for a way to express things that I don’t know how to say in words, and when I listen to Cindy G’s Moonshiner’s Daughter, I don’t just feel like I’m listening to someone who appreciates music’s powerful ability to transcend linguistics; I feel like I’m listening to a kindred spirit. Cindy G dishes out a lot of really special melodies in her new album, but it’s her intimate connection with the music itself that will leave audiences blown away after a single listen.
Moonshiner’s Daughter contains within its twelve tracks a song titled Long Line of Love, which arguably defines its narrative. A ballad that focuses on love’s patience and the virtues of loyalty, the track is a testament to Cindy G’s lyrical facilities as much as it is her ability to execute them in the studio.
I’ve found that when it comes to artists who have as much experience as she does that this stage of the game infrequently offers any surprises to their diehard fans – that isn’t the case with Moonshiner’s Daughter. Long Line of Love, to me at least, is the moment when Cindy G stopped being an indie bluegrass sensation and became the voice of tomorrow’s western music. She’s been working towards this aesthetical epiphany since her salad days, and its realization is more glorious than anyone could have anticipated.
The title track sparks the chills at the beginning of Moonshiner’s Daughter and sets us up for an audiologically stimulating trip into the rough riding countryside of Cindy G’s corner of Pennsylvania. Stained with whiskey and nicotine, she takes the tattered tapestry of Americana and cleans it with her optimistic prayers, sung one line after another.
There’s something divine in the way she nimbly works her way from one verse to the next, almost like a spider weaving an almost translucent web meant to be inescapable for her prey. I could get lost in her music all day, and judging from the early returns on Moonshiner’s Daughter, I’m not the only one.
If you liked Jail Break, her breakthrough 2015 release, then you’re going to go crazy for Cindy G’s latest, and quite possibly greatest album to date. Cindy G didn’t make this album to bring down the pop music establishment, but I would be pretty surprised if her contemporaries didn’t take heed of her edgy improvements and try to work on some of their own creative foundations.
As an artist who isn’t bound by the demands of a major label’s A&R department, she’s been able to shape her own persona without having to concern herself with what anyone else wants her to look or sound like. The results have been nothing short of flawless, and if I were Cindy G I wouldn’t change a thing about my music or the woman responsible for it.
To find out more about Cindy G, visit her official website by clicking here. Give her a like on Facebook by clicking here.
