THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sima Cunningham is a soothsayer. A friend-soother. A bearer of memories. And the hub of a bicycle wheel with spokes that span the whole City of Chicago.
In High Roller, her first full-length 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 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.
High Roller rises to an emotional peak in its final track, a shining moment in which a simple slice of vegan cheese is illuminated by the sum of all light in the universe, with the cosmic rays of a grieving friend’s impossible pain. Adonai is about Sima’s friend who died by suicide in high school, at a time when he couldn’t imagine anyone accepting him for who he was. Sima sings “to put it out into the universe / that you are missed so much… I really miss your touch.” And some of these scattered rays bounce back from the cosmos onto us.
Apart from all its sensitivity, support, and sacrifice, High Roller is also a warning, a humane kick in the pants of self-concerned people who dare to ignore the wise and the careful among us — who dare to ignore Sima in particular. “I could be the golden one / If someone had the common sense to hear me out,” she laments without any self-pity, only hard-earned knowing. May we all have the common sense to hear Sima out.”
