Sima Cunningham

Sima is a soothsayer. Sima is a friend-soother. Sima is a bearer of memories. And Sima is the hub of a bicycle wheel with spokes that span the whole City of Chicago.

In High Roller, her first full-length out on Ruination Records since 2014, Sima brings all of these roles to bear. She floats into the minds of friends who have survived violence, a family member who was never able to speak, a classmate who was lost to bigotry, and builds a floor underneath them, a platform as comforting as a traditional Armenian quilt, as thrilling and delightful as a Tin Pan Alley tune. As she offers support to these loved ones in the form of songs, you feel her prescience and her empathy. You feel as though her clear, fair eyes are gazing not just at an unknown other but at you, too.

Together with multi-instrumentalist Dorian Gehring, brother Liam Kazar on bass, and a cast of Chicago-based musicians including Macie Stewart, Spencer Tweedy, Elizabeth Moen, Andrew Sa, Charles Rumback, Jack Henry and Twin Peaks’ Clay Frankel, Sima grows a garden of an album that progresses from wild-growing prairie grass—her folk roots—to diligent, gorgeous topiaries. Opener “Nothing” explodes into a prog-adjacent swirl. Undulating guitars amplified by a Leslie organ speaker couch “For Liam.” And passing-traffic violins lilt the title track to a dejected yet somehow defiant end.