Quinn Cicala – “Best Friend”

Self-Released

In a world where MJ Lenderman is on every publication’s year-end list and “Indie Twang” is the phrase on everyone’s lips, it feels unfair that Quinn Cicala is left flying under the radar. For nearly a decade now, Cicala has been releasing some of my favorite music in the modern Americana/Alt-Country sphere. His first releases, 2017’s Dream I Had and 2019’s Post Country, took clear influence from bands like Pinegrove and The Front Bottoms, pairing anxious acoustic guitar strums with Cicala’s plainspoken voice and knockout penmanship. 

By the time 2021’s semi-self-titled Cicala was released, it was clear that Cicala was operating in a lane all his own. One year later, the Arkansas EP acted as a new high-water mark, revisiting an essential cut from his early discography and chasing it with songs that swung for the rafters like “New York Times” and “I Wish Life Worked Like That.” At each step of the way, I waited for the world to catch up, hoping that this music would attain the recognition and the fandom that it so clearly deserved. 

For the last couple of years, Cicala has been building out a release called Gold, dropping a song every so often and tacking it onto this collection. This includes the drop-dead stunner “Telephone,” the aforementioned “New York Times,” and now another new song called “Best Friend.”

Recorded back in February of 2023, “Best Friend” is about some of Cicala’s “former bad neighbors on a particularly bad night” and comes with a tease that more songs will come soon to further flesh out the world of Gold. The track stirs to life slowly and ambles past images of screen doors, sleeping old men, and people smoking weed in the woods. In the final minute of the song, Quinn’s vocals pair back to simple hums, and the band launches into a meditative instrumental stretch that fills the rest of the scenery with bright, beautiful splotches. 

Until the next dispatch from Gold, I’ve fashioned Quinn Cicala’s two most recent EPs and live session tracks into a makeshift full-length release I’m calling Golden Arkansas. If you haven’t heard his music yet, I strongly encourage you to venture into Cicala’s world because it’s beautiful and just waiting for people to discover it.