I don’t wanna forget
Everything that you said
Though I live with regrets
I know it’s cynical
In Chicago, the skies have a way of holding onto gray, and Cynical feels like it was born from that weather. The track is a union between Eden Sierotnik’s Cool Heat project and the trio Nothing But Silence, a meeting of two forces that thrive on atmosphere but anchor it in pulse and presence. It is collaboration, not as a compromise, but as a collision — the kind where new shapes are thrown into being.
The song arrives on hushed chords and breath-lit harmonies. Guitars bloom in shoegaze gauze, then curl back into silence. Sierotnik’s meticulous sense of texture collides with Rudy de Anda’s post-punk bite, Edgar Torres’ spectral keys, and Eric Black’s unerring drumwork. Together they create a current that tugs in two directions: expansive and intimate, icy and tender. You hear the bones of dream-pop, but also the weight of Chicago basements, late nights, rooms where voices blur and every word carries too much meaning.
At its core, Cynical circles the bitter aftertaste of love gone wrong. The lyrics tilt between memory and resistance: a desire to hold onto the sweetness of the past, and the instinct to push it all away. There’s no melodrama here, just the truth of fractured communication, of days where silence feels safer than speaking.
What makes it hit is the tension: dream-heavy tones cut against sharp rhythms, softness carried on machinery. Sierotnik’s synth flourishes add color at the edges, while the band’s guitars lay down a wide, aching sky. The mix is both maximal and spare, every detail counted out with purpose, yet every phrase left to breathe. You can hear a distant kinship with the mid-2000s era when bands like Panda Bear, Deerhunter, and Grizzly Bear chased fractured memories through tape hiss and half-lit rooms. But here, the approach is distinctly raw, immediate, and anchored in the weight of place.
It’s proof of what can happen when artists collide in one place and let their voices overlap. Together, Cool Heat and Nothing But Silence sharpen each other, and in the tension, they find something worth holding onto.
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