“Crazy” by The Cinema, Tuesday, July 5, 2022

The Cinema released two albums: 2011's My Blood Is Full of Airplanes and 2014's Talking In Your Sleep. The band formed when Indie rock group Lydia took a hiatus after their keyboardist and co-vocalist Mindy White decided to leave the band and form another project with Copeland's Bryan and Stephen Laurenson under the appellation States. Lydia's lead vocalist, Leighton Antelman formed The Cinema with Lydia's producer, Matt Malpass. 
 

I WON'T TELL IF YOU DON'T ASK. On The Cinema's second record, Talking In Your Sleep, the band features former Lydia bandmate Mindy White on the song "Punchline" and Copeland's vocalist Aaron Marsh on the second track "Turn It On." The Aaron Marsh feature is how I found this band when I was going through AppleMusic a few years ago looking for songs that featured Marsh or bands that were produced by him. On the audio commentary for Talking In Your Sleep, Matt Malpass explains that "Turn It On" is about how moments appear pristine in a photograph, but the real story isn't quite as perfect as the moment is remembered. The music video for the song is strange, featuring what appears to be a lesbian relationship and its highly stylized, like an advertisement. At one point in the video, one of the women bites into a raw onion. When talking about track three and today's song, "Crazy," Leighton Antelmen said that most of the songs were written when the two band members were on "opposite sides of the country." Malpass would write "over the top" pop hooks and Antelmen would try to ground the song in the band's Indie Pop foundations. Antelmen also says that what sounds like it could be an effect on the chorus is actually three children singing on the record. 

THAT CRAZY LOOK IN YOUR EYE / I'M JUST SAYING YOU GOT ME. Lydia's hiatus was short lived, but the band didn't return to being a full time band right away. Between 2010 and 2015, the band released some singles and deluxe editions of their previous albums, and toured occasionally. Since the promotion of Talking In Your Sleep in 2015 with release of the "Turn It On" music video and the Spotify audio commentary of the record, the band hasn't released anything since. They did tweet a photo of demos from sessions labeled "LP3" in 2016, but perhaps Lydia obligations have caused the duo to go onto a hiatus about the same length as the Lydia hiatus. Today's song is about what love looks like from the outside. It looks crazy. What others see as red flags, you see as red roses. In most cases "love is blind" wears off, and you start to see clearly what your friends and others see. But on the rare occasion, everyone else could be wrong. Either way, it's always fun to play music journo when discovering an obscure band. Enjoy!

Read the lyrics on Genius.